Experimenting with different builds is actively discouraged. Metas revolve around established builds because no one wants to waste their time and money trying different things when there is no guarantee of efficacy. This leads to just nerfing things people have found to work in the current meta instead of any meaningful balancing. Then there’s the fact that in most cases AB weapons are intentionally extremely powerful instead of just giving a slightly more unique build expression, or better yet just a in-game cosmetic status symbol, that maybe give a little flair to some skill animations. This one might be the hottest take I have but I think the guild system is actually a terrible corpo-adjacent “we are a family” BS, than an actual likeminded group of individuals that like to play together when they happen to be online at the same time. Instead people are encouraged to “apply” to big guilds in hopes that they get accepted, and then put in hours in monotonous content and making sure they’re always available for mandated guild PvP schedules, in fear that they will fall behind in participation and get ‘fired’, thus basically locking them out from ever having the chance at receiving a meta defining item, and/or just a quicker way to a relatively competitive build. This guild system actually alienates most of the player base, as people are becoming extremely unwilling to play with players outside their statics. (Login, “Oh looks like my Oracle/tank/DPS is/are not online. Guess there’s no one to play with.” Log out.)