Good summary here: http://celeiry.tumblr.com/post/131586324533/tldr-you-need-all-the-existing-specializations
Okay, so I know some people are shitting about this, especially for Revenant. At first, I wasn’t a huge fan of the decision, but I understood that Anet wanted people to have the base specs before moving onto the elite. You know, use the expansion content for the expansion specs?
However, that’s the harmless/hopeful reason. Let’s consider that we get 398 hero points by getting to level 80 and elite spec costs 400 points to fully unlock everything. So, without that restriction, a new character could use tomes and scrolls to instantly boost to level 80, go grab 2 hero points and fully unlock an elite spec. Because of how they work, you could probably just run the elite spec on its own throughout the old world (And maybe parts of Maguuma) before unlock the core stuff. Is there a problem with this? Hmm, I don’t see one. Player choice and all...
Then I considered: wait a minute, if the elite spec track also gave out Ascended gear...then you could use this to quickly collect Ascended items without much work. You get runes, sigils, and possibly Ascended version of each Elite spec’s unique armor and weapon pieces. Currently that’d be: 2 light armor shoulders, 1 light armor helm, 1 medium armor shoulder, 2 medium armor helms, 1 heavy armor shoulder, 1 heavy armor helm, 1 heavy armor gloves, 2 shield, 1 warhorn, 1 greatsword, 2 staves, 1 hammer, 1 longbow and 1 torch. That’s...quite a bit for only having to toss tomes and getting 2 hero points per character. Considering how many tomes are out there, players (if this were an option) could get guaranteed Ascended items for little work. And anyone who thinks players wouldn’t do this if given the option is just delusional.
So, given that into consideration for current and future elite specs, I agree with Anet having players work for their elite specs. this also holds back some FotM switching when new elite specs come out in the future. I’d rather have something to work towards on alts outside of just playing around in the new zones than be able to unlock the elite spec right off the bat.
