f13.net

I'm sure it's been answered but I haven't seen it. One of the cooler things about GW1 was the primary and secondary professions and how you could mix and match skills to overcome challenges. Why did GW2 do away with this? I get why they did away with henchmen/heroes as GW2 is no longer so instanced but I don't get the other.

Long story short: For the same reason the skill system is less flexible.  It allowed for too many skill choices and made it impossible to balance (and extremely hard to scale).

And thus removed 90% of the fun.

Just a matter of perspective.  You still have quite a lot of choice in terms of what skills you use and how you use them.

Not really, from what I saw.  The skill system in A Secret World is much, much more interesting than the watered down choices you have in GW2.

It's unfortunate and to an extent I agree with Nevermore.  I still think it's fun, but I do miss the deck building aspect.

With luck, they'll have skills we can swap out on weapons down the road.

The more open your skill system the more you end up with only a handful of builds and "useful" skills. Having to accept skills as packages (in the form of a weapon) or class flavored has advantages as well.

It will be interesting to see how the skill system evolves. I still remain interested in whether it's a brilliant piece of game balance or a random assemblage of half-baked ideas. It's hard to tell without a decent soak time.

While I love the TSW skill system, I prefer the GW2 system just because Balance is more easily achieved.  I'm playing this game for the PVP so Balance is more important to me.  If this is was a primarily (for me) a PVE game, I would be a bit disappointed.

I miss the deck building aspect but I'm fine with my skills being set by higher level choices.  I also enjoy not having to run back to a trainer or playing hunt the boss to gain new skills. 

Some aspects of skill hunting were fun (e.g. keeping your build viable during early and early-midgame even with a smaller number of inferior skills), but there was plenty of tedium in there, too. See also: playing a spirit build channeler ritualist with and without Signet of Spirits, rangers in pve without Barrage, etcetera.

Besides, there were cookie cutter builds that you were 'expected' to play in groups and pvp anyway - my trap spamming degen-focused ranger (spike trap, the-trap-that-bleeds-and-slows-you, flame trap, dust trap, apply poison, whirling axe, whirling defense, troll unguent) was amusing in low-end random arenas, but really ineffective when compared to pretty much any other ranger build.

Even in the 'casual' pvp formats (JQ and FA) there weren't that many builds that were considered useful. In JQ you needed highly-specialized builds that could either nuke groups of 4 NPCs in 3 abilities, prevent builds from doing the same, or have abilities that increased the sped of your juggernauts/turtles. Same with FA, though which builds were effective depended on whether you played kurzick or luxon. I never played high-end pvp (no way to as a 'random'), but the necessity of using an optimized build (in practice, one of the 2-3 available for your class) was even more important.