RipJack

I agree with most of this post, it's well thought out and points out the elephant(s) in the room, thank you.

Even though I agree with a lot, I still love gw2, it's probably a false hope of the game getting better but I've reserved myself for new content. I just hope Arena Net can gather their thoughts on combat and content and see what makes gw2 actually fun.

Can any necromancer in high level FotM confirm this dagger build?

It seems odd to me how this build would work.

I'd love more diversity. It would bring so much more flavor to every class and maybe we'd see some interesting builds come out of it.

Meta builds can be apealing to certain players but it depends on how healthy they are to the game. So far I don't think there's a way to tell wether meta builds are healthy for GW2 or not. It just seems like AN doesn't like meta builds all that much or else there'd be a recount in-game. Personal opinion goes out the window with hard numbers yet in terms of fun personal opinion means everything.

I'd have to go with minion necro. It's so underlooked yet so fun, sure the AI needs work and sometimes the minions are less useful than a paper weight, but when they do work you just see numbers flying and things dying. The amount of life force you get from either your minions or enemies dying allows you to use death shroud much more often. I run Blood Fiend, Bone Fiend, Flesh Golem and Flesh Worm. I swap flesh worm for Shadow fiend when running through the dungeons. The last utility slot is either spectral walk or well of darkness, honestly you can swap the utility for what you prefer but have at least a few minions out.

It's not perfect but I believe meta builds are something arena net doesn't like, so I try fun builds but try to keep them focused enough on one aspect of the proffession rather than having them scattered all around.

Thank you for sharing my opinion. This game is amazing when you use your head, hell my engi is explosively fun and the asura are the best race i've played in any mmo!