Unfortunately for you and everyone in your situation GW2 is a PvE oriented game. Same as you can not call WoW a pvp game even though it has a solid pvp ground.
Staying alive in PvE is not only positioning, quite the opposite, staying alive in pvp is positioning you need to make decisions fast, while you have more options and ways depending on your comp in PvE to stay alive and successfully do the content. BUT!! Every PvE player will choose the easiest way possible, Everytime you present them with options. The most basic example: when a boss is killed by overhealing the damage in raids or fractals, if harbinger can not be overhealed as long as they have to cut from their DPS to sustain, no one will want them in any PvE content. They killed elementalist as a DPS long ago. No one every said "I wish we had ele as a DPS" or you don't see on LFG "we need this spec, preferably ele" never ever. When I ask pug parties to switch to my ele they say "please no, ele means wipe they don't contribute to anything" even though ele could be used good in PvE content. As far as I understand you don't know anything about PvE content if you think it's that basic. We do not need classes more squashy than elementalist. Do you wanna kill a spec for PvE even before they were born, yeah that's harbinger right now.