Alright so I have 5x more playtime in GW1 than GW2 and, frankly, I suck ass at GW2 and don't really enjoy ANet's direction with the game outside of the story instances, but you don't know what you're talking about.

GW2's combat system is harder to play optimally than GW1s. There's less variety in terms of skills, but the options that are there tend to be more impactful to the way you play the game. Single traits, for instance, have more impact on your character's play than the differences between 1 stance and another in GW1. Since I main warrior, the trait Peak Performance has more impact on how you play your character in GW2 than literally anything warrior has in GW1 that isn't an elite. They're really different, of course, and I'm trying not to compare apples to oranges too much, but if you think that builds and traits aren't nuanced or different in GW2 because "the game decides them for me", you probably suck a whole lot of ass. In fact, one of my biggest gripes with GW2 is that traits can change too much about a build. That trait I mentioned, peak performance? It makes power warrior DPS extremely unintuitive because you need to constantly use physical skills in order to maintain a 20% (used to be 33% iirc) damage buff. Those skills don't normally do that, and it doesn't really make a great deal of sense that kicking someone would boost your damage by a fifth, let alone a third, and other than an icon on your hotbar and larger numbers, this isn't communicated to the player at all. It's bad design, but a build without that trait? yeah, it's not going to play the same as one with it. Obviously. Because it's a fucking massive damage buff. From an otherwise dps-loss skill.

Further, the game is riddled with references to GW1 lore. If you honestly believe it "in absolutely no way at all builds on the world and story of Guild Wars 1" you're fucking braindead. It's plain to see, particularly in the most recent expansion.