Elites skills that shouldn't be elite.

Signet of Midnight allows a N/M or M/N to blind one person and then transfer his own blindness to another. Combined with Mantra of Inscription, you can selectively blind 4 people every 20 seconds. If you remove the elite status, you could then use Plauge Signet in conjunction with Midnight and Inscription, which would be incredibly overpowered.

sigh. Lightning Surge and Orb are the very definition of spike damage. You hit him with Surge the Orb him. Travel time and after cast means that you'll hit him for 107 (forgot what it was on lvl) and 137 net damage. That's 240 damage that just magically appeared on a target. Furthermore it IS a sweet thing to bring in tombs. We used it for a while and yes held the HoH for many consecutive times. It's just that good. You're still under the mentality that all skills must be spammed over and over when in fact a PvP Air Elementalist spends some of his time wanding people with Conjure and waiting for his team to call that spike.

Finally Obsidian Flame might be an option but you really just want earth for the wards. And if you're carryign wards then it means your energy duties are tied to using just those skills for the fight. Surge and Orb, and some people even add Chain Lightning to it, is pretty much a combo that'll make your warriors love you when they call it.

Some elite skills are for their great damage and others are there to maintain balance. Are there any crappy elite skills? Hell yeah.. I mean i'm just happy that Mark of Rodgort isn't an elite skills coz that skills is so powerful when combined with a ranger or warrior primary profession, I can think of quite a few elite skills that seems pretty much embarassing compared to this skill because of the combos you can do with Mark of Rodgort...I just hope it stays a non-elite skill...don't want it to become an elite because of this post...

Btw Illusionary Weapon + Hundred Blades were a common combo back then when HB wasn't an elite :P

Has anyone mentioned Hundred Blades yet? Granted, it's a decent skill, but when I use it during farming in Perdition Rock, it just didn't seem all that great... at least, not great enough to be an elite.
But that's just me, and maybe I'm missing something.

it was made elite not because of what it could do itself, but what it could do when coupled with Illusionary Weaponry.

Aaaah, I see. That would be a pretty killer combo.

Don't forget the 50 - 60 dmg Lightning Strike that follows Surge and Orb..

Or imagine you're in a pvp -- there are 2 monks on the enemy team keeping the other team alive. You have 3 Air E/x's........ One casts Gale on the non-targetted healer, knocking him down for 3 seconds (no heals for 3 seconds) then all 3 E/x's cast LS on the other monk, followed by Orb, followed by Strike........... dead monk. The other monk gets up about .75 seconds before his teammate is N-U-K-E-D. (3 surges = 300 dmg roughly + 3 Orbs = roughly 360 dmg + 3 strikes = 150 dmg roughly.... Total = roughly 810 Dmg. Almost in one shot. Good freakin luck there.
Lightning Surge is a good elite.

Oh WOW... I never expect to see this topic... never even see it comming... wow... this is like... 2 months ago when guru didnt start for that long yet...

but anyway...

MiND FREEZE... the hell am i suppose to do with it? for looks? cant even..

Signet of midnight deserves its elite tag. I've used the thing, and the duration of the blind is about 15s., which also happens to be its recharge time. Couple that with Epidemic, which also has a 15s. recharge time, and you can spread the blind to a mass of enemies. And you can keep this up indefinitely, since the duration is equal to the recharge timer.
Say sig. of midnight was not elite, you could use it in conjunction with epidemic and 'victory is mine' to seriously boost your health and energy. And that is just an obvious combo, I'm sure there are others.

I happen to think the elite tags are a pretty decent idea. All you hear is people complaining about this way of balancing skills, but no actual suggestions as to how to replace it with something better. Yes, we're all experts at criticizing.

No, it's a Protective Spirit and Reversal of Fortune that was magically appeared on a target after a Lightning Surge. Not to mention that any target with half a brain have 3 seconds to start running so Orbs will not hit anyway (well, maybe you can time your orbs so they will always hit, never tested it).
Lightning Orb - Lightning Strike works better than Lightning Surge - Lightning Orb. We never used Lightning Surge in our Air Ele build for obvious reasons. Chain Lightning is so much better An example of effectiveness of a build without Lightning Surge (it took a sunday and two evenings to get that score): http://ladder.guildwars.com/ladder.dll?name=Out+Of+Mana (it's a clan made for GvG by two Russian clans - Ladder to Hell and RusCorp).

Against any decent group, Lightning Surge+Orb will work once or twice at best. Some good teams put Protective Spirit, Reversal of Fortune or Spell Breaker even according to a direction Elementalists are faced during a casting animation of an Orb. And you're telling that they somehow will not be able to defend a target when you clearly tell enemy team who'll be a target and they have 3 seconds to react?

You have enough time to respond when Warriors run to their target. That is a good sign that you should throw a Reversal of Fortune on a target just in case and look closely for it (especially if warriors didn't made a spike damage for some time and so they have a lot of adrenaline for spiking). Also, someone targeted by melees can run, and that means that some orbs will miss.