So I have a pretty beefy system (Ryzen 5800x3D, 6900XT...) and just to let you know Guild Wars 2 tends to run bad even on those systems in certain situations. Most of the time those are situations where a lot of players come together, WvW, Meta Events or Lions Arch in general.

What really helps is setting the Character Model Quality and Character Model Limit to low (not the lowest!) and as a killer feature also put Shadows on Low.

I don't have the feeling that I loose a lot of visual fidelity and on the other hand I gain a huge performance boost so that even heavy meta events run well above 60fps and feel a lot smoother. Maybe this helps you a little bit.

Upgrading PC for your mmo of choice? Dedication! :D

GW2 runs pretty poorly in WvW zergs on any hardware.

You should set shadows to low, character details to low and disable effects for allies.

I have a 3070TI and it still run like ass, when there’s a lot of people. Not zero fps though 😅

GW2 is extremely CPU heavy, so you want to get the best CPU you can, as you said especially taking into consideration single core performance. GPU is of less concern so you should be fine with what you have I think. I run it on Ryzen 5 1600, and RX580 8GB. It runs alright, but you can really hear it. Biggest effect to me were CPU and SSD upgrades