I apologize for how long this is but definitely something i feel needs to be said. Like the title says, I really don't know where to go in this game anymore. I've loved this game since it came out and I even use to play guild wars 1 but the issue im running into is that if you want to play anything other then open world youre basically locked into like 4 or 5 classes. Those being guardian, revenant, ranger, mesmer or warrior. What i mean is yeah other classes are usable in pvp and wvw to an extent but if you want to play end game content like raids or to fractals your locked into playing a different class for pretty much everything which in my opinion kind of kills the fun and I'm honestly getting tired of people saying just to make alt classes for each type of gameplay. I'd rather not. I'd love to be able to play the 1 class I enjoy the most in every part of the game. And this isn't me complaining that I can't play 1 class. Its me saying that to those of us that don't want multiple alts or want to enjoy a different class then the classes that get all the love cant unless we want to be restricted on what we can do or if we try to go out of those restrictions then the community turns on us and unleashes all their toxicity and hate on us and it's ridiculous. When I pick the class I want to play I pick it based on what theme or characteristics of the class I like and that are fun to me. This is a game. Something thats supposed to be fun. Part of what brought this discussion up is the other day doing T4 fractals I posted an lfg for all welcome. It wasn't a speed run or a cm. Just basic, go at your own pace fractals. Midway through one of the fractals i had an elitist firebrand start jumping on one of our other party members telling them to switch to a dps build instead of the build they were using that was more comfortable for them to play. After watching them go back and forth for about 5 mins I finally had had enough and stepped in and told him to back off, that it was an all welcome party and we weren't trying to speed run. If it were raids then yeah I get needing to do things a certain way so you can kill the boss before it enrages but even then I don't agree with how raids are set up to where only certain classes aren't usable because they aren't "meta". I've played this game since launch and back then when arah was the hardest thing to beat i put a group of elitists in their place by showing how a good necromancer can be if played right and afterwards was praised and asked to join them on other dungeon runs. Now it doesn't matter how good you are, if you're not playing a build or class that someone else deems as meta then you aren't even given a second look and you're told how you're a trash player. I'd love to be able to just pick the one class I enjoy most and fully gear it with both power and condi gear (weapons included) but no instead, thanks to ridiculous balancing, I have one of each class aside from ele with gear all over the place between 8 classes. Yeah I could just go play wow or ffxiv but I don't enjoy those games as much as this one and I'm not really a fan of eso. The point I'm getting at is this community needs to stop with the toxicity, start being helpful with each other, stop worrying about everything having to be done as fast as possible and just enjoy the game. Not everything is a race. If you can do a raid boss with classes or specs that aren't meta and beat it with even just 10-30 seconds left to spare on the timer then guess what? You still beat it in the time frame. Allow people to enjoy the class they want to play. Not push them into a class they don't like all because its more beneficial to you clearing something fast because then you're the only one enjoying yourself while everyone else isn't. Because this is how the community has been as far as what's meta people like me have a hard time actually enjoying the game. And we are stuck with either stick to open world and be bored to death doing the same content over and over or try and learn 20 different rotations from 6 different classes just to get frustrated because some of us have trouble memorizing 1 just so we can try to enjoy the full extent of the game. So i have no idea what to do from here. Any honest suggestions would be helpful and honestly I hope some of you read this and understand where I'm coming from.