3 points:

1) Most of your stats come from trinkets. Trinkets are ridiculously easy to get except for Viper, but it's still not expensive. Armor pieces like Shoulders/Gloves/Boots (ascended versus exotic) literally give +2 extra to each stat. You can run exotic shoulders, gloves, and boots and you'll see next to no difference in your dps. The idea that ascended armor invalidates exotic armor is a pretty big lie unless +2/+2/+2 somehow manages to give you 15% bonus. It's 5% bonus stats, not 15% bonus stats. It's 15% bonus DPS for zerker gear only, and this includes trinkets, which once again aren't anywhere as near as you exaggerate them to be (1000 gold? really?)

2) Generic MMOs literally make your previous things useless, and you claiming gw2 is doing that is a complete farce. Unless you believe that +2/+2/+2 on an armor piece completely invalidates the previous armor piece, they're not following other MMOs, which can literally increase the stats per piece by 50% and negate the entire usefulness of the previous "highest tier". Exotic is still useful and it's still easy to get. So yes, this is what you lied about.

3) You can get HoT stats on everything while it's full exotic. I don't know where you brought up the idea it must be ascended to be HoT stats. Now it's one argument to say that HoT stats shouldn't be gated behind a grind. However, it's a complete lie to say that it's gated only behind ascended. Additoinally, you can make full exotic vipers and still do next to top dps (here for reference: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Sy-7RTdJGVc).