Too bad I had some work to do, there’s been some really interesting comments being posted I would have wanted to reply to
The more I think about it, the more interesting the OP’s suggestion is. It’s definitely not what any common RESETS NAO!! QQer are wanting. And with a little thinking how it would affect those special cases mentioned on this thread earlier (and possible unexpected and hard to foresee ones) and little bit tweaking to counter them without changing the basic idea, it could be worth it. If you could only reset your current rank, and only once it probably wouldn’t be used too much in guild tournaments and such that it would feel like abusing the system or cause “character of this patch” phenomenon.
But it’s still hard to make sure it would be unabusable even at later levels. The last ranks will take months to level up when we are closer to the final level cap. The difference of leveling up different classes would be huge at that point. It could be very well worth it to level the basic level to max with some other class and then resetting the other which might be superior at pvp but pain in the ass and extremely slow to level up. With your maxed basic level, it might be significantly easier to level up that other class because you’d have so much more hp, can equip better gear etc. and you could kind of “power level” your rank up this way. And the difference in leveling speeds could be so huge at later levels that you might end up saving weeks or months through these kind of tricks. On the other hand, the differences on potential leveling speeds could stay minimal enough to not be worth it too.
Leveling will be slow anyways though, so I’m not sure if this can be called abusing this suggested system. Players would definitely not end up switching their classes every day or week because of this. But because of this power leveling effect, anything more than resetting the current rank would very likely turn out abusable.
Edit: And I think some people are too focused on the idea that there should be some extra punishments added into it, especially when some of these “punishments” would make it easier to abuse it. Anything that would allow you to reset more than your current rank to “punish” you actually make the system more pointless and vulnerable for abuse, unless the circle choices until the last rank are locked or something.