Worth it to make an Ele in Factions?

I totally agree.

I'm not a PvPer, really, but I've been wondering that too about spirits. If a bunch of rangers start laying down spirits all in pretty much one place, wouldn't that be a good target for some fiery attention?

I actually have decided to try out a somewhat different pyro-mancer. Instead of going for the big BOOM, I decided to go for the burn. Meaning that I try to set the enemies on fire via things like incendiary bonds / immolate etc and try to keep them on fire.

Granted, against fire-using foes I've had to switch my strategy, but mostly this seems to work well.

I'm planning on making an Elementalist primary once Factions comes out. Not only because of all of the snazzy new spells, but because Factions Elementalists actually look decent.

That's correct, meteor shower only hits 3 times on the 3,6 and 9 secs. The meteors that fall before the first 3 secs are just animations and does nothing, so too do the meteors that fall after the 9 secs. Its a prime reason why meteor shower is a joke in pvp, assuming you even get it off, as its actual cast time is 8s, not the 5s that is listed and anyone who gets caught in a meteor shower in pvp has really really bad battlefield awareness and deserves to be nuked.

It's a good skill for chasing iWay warriors off of your Ghostly Hero in the Hall of Heroes. Well, either that or they stand there and die, either way works for me. iWay warriors are easier to farm than Mountain Trolls. =p

Outside of those situations? Yeah, Meteor Shower isn't all that impressive.

Peace,
-CxE

Eles are great fun to play in both pvp and pve so id say thats a better reason than any to make one, they also have a fairly unique playstyle so if you already have a caster you wont get bored.
I didn't get to try fire spells on factions enemies so i dont know how much damage they will be putting out but im sure anet wont make it any worse, i doubt they buffed fire skills just to make everything more resistant to them.

I've seen a lot of negative posts about Elementalists in PvP but theres a lot of builds that use them.

Fire Eles work well in pressure builds and have great potential on altars, most people will say that you can just run from a meteor shower or spread out, but from my experience people tend not to flee like AI, also theres a lot of non-AOE fire spells that can be used for small damage spikes.

Water Eles are useful in hex builds and spells like water trident do well on relic runs and keep kiting monks down for the warriors, also blurred vision is a nice melee counter not to mention the snares.

For Earth Eles you have Obsidian Flame which is the basis of a lot of good spike builds and the good ole EQ/AS for a bit of damage, wards are great defense and can keep a relic runner still for a whole game with some good body blocking.

Air magic is also used a lot in rainbow spikes and has good utility skills.

A lot of holding builds take a couple of elementalists with healing skills and a couple of attack skills for a spike so they can withstand pressure from 2 teams and still manage to kill.

note the words single strike there. This is still most definitely the case. But since when has an ele been able to apply damage like that consistently? Note that Anet never said "Elementalists summon the powers of earth, air, fire, and water and command them at will. They can inflict more damage consistently than any other profession."

I'll stick to my earth magic, thanks.

Archane Echo + Shockwave, Aftershock, Tenai's Crystal, Crystal Wave

FTW