Increase Burning duration for Ele spells

but Obsidian flesh/mist form can be kept up 75% of the time. With ele armor your foe only needs 25% of the time to kill you. And Mist form is nothing if there is a mezmer around and even though you aren't getting damaged the warriors, assassins, and rangers all can still put conditions on you.

IMO Elementalist are vunerable to most amount of conditions out of any class. They have no regen ability without being part monk, so degen builds own them frequently. They have the longest cast times out of any of the casters so that makes interupt builds very good against them. Not to mention one backfire and they are useless. They have no armor so warriors have no issue cutting them down. They have to stay still to cast their only speed buff. I don't know about you, but generally when you need a speed buff you are running for your life. And when a Warrior is blinded he is still able to cast healing spells, but when a ele is dazzed he can't do anything. And last but not least, All you need is one monk to put protective spirit on your target and you are worthless.

The way this game is set up it favors a series of small hits in place of one huge hit.

If indeed Elementalists suck (in PvP), then kill you character and create something else. Ah typical cop out. If something is broke fix it.

First off, Mist Form, concussive shot, a counter, big deal, ALL guild wars skills have counters, and I could say the same about your condition causing traps, or energy denial with concussive shot. It depends on the situation. You can either get traps up before the battle over a lengthy time, or you can use ele skills during battle and get the same effect, and these skills can be reused during the course of a particularily long battle, unlike traps, which will be interrupted if you're facing anyone good. Obsidian Flesh is earth magic, meaning that you will probably also have kinetic armor up, giving an impressive 104 armor level bonus. Sure your favored dryder's defense will be more effective for the mere 15% of time its active, but Obsidian flesh/mist form can be kept up 75% of the time. If you think elementists have pathetic damage, where do you think the term "nuker" came from. And with elementist conditions/hexes, the reason they have a pathetic duration is to compensate for the extreme effect. Almost any condition can be kept up 100% of the time with the right build. Sure, poison will do twice the damage over four times the time, but like I said, keeping one condition up 100% of the time isnt hard. And what are you using to keep up Kinetic Armour? Stone Daggers no doubt? *oops my finger slipped* Oh sorry, i just distracted it. Now to desperately spam some other skills in the hope that you can keep it up, oh wait your now out of energy *damn* Obsidian Flesh is elite, meaning you lose any decent form of energy management to keep Kinetic Armour up for any length of time.

Mist Form isn't a good skill, face it. I've ran my Ele to Droknars from Beacons purely because almost every enemy on the way uses physical attacks. (its not my build so i can't take the credit). What do you do when the Eidolon uses it? I'll tell you, laugh at how it just protected itself from warriors 1 second before you Shatter. That or just ignore it and let the rest of your tem wail on it with magic while you interrupt through it, then when it recasts, interrupt it... If your talking about PvP, many boon prots bring Drain Enchantment. And also, if your in PvP, why the hell are you running Mist Form!?

The term nuker is because they do high damage to LOTS of targets. The term spike is lots of damage to single targets. Of course a frigging nuker will do more damage! Rodgorts Invocation can hit for plenty, if it only hits 1 target its a huge waste of energy. All nuking skills cost alot of energy and take a long time to do. If a warrior could wail on 4 targets simultaenously, knocking them all down (Earth Shaker i know), then unleashing Crushing Blow on them all and Irresistable Blow, theres a good chance the hammer warrior would beat them in damage. Especially later on in a fight when eles are exhausted to shit and the hammer warrior is still smacking away. PvE you can wait for ages to recover from exhaustion between battles or simply calm the next 1 down a bit. PvP there is no waiting time. The longer a fight with eles goes, the less chance that team has of winning.

I'm not bothered about Deep Freeze only slowing for 10 seconds. Thats fine, its merely a snare for several targets. Cripple can be removed a lot more readily than Deep Freeze can. Also it has no conditional on its freeze time, it remains 10seconds whatever your Water Magic.
Reducing Burning to 4 would really eliminate the point of burning. Bleeding does 3, as you'd expect its a slow painful process. Burning as it sounds it should be frying the life out of you. 7 is fine to me, its just the duration of it is very poor. Seriously how the hell would adding 1 or 2 seconds to some of the spells unbalance things. For a start it might make Hells Precipice at least a challenge rather than a complete joke. Mind Burn is a bitch to interrupt, Rodgorts Invocation? You've gotta be kidding. You have time to tab through targets and see that and still interrupt it. Not to mention that for a 25 cost skill, Prot Spirit reduces its effectiveness way too much for what you pay. At least the burning could be useful for a change.

First off, Thanks for everyones input for or against. I love a healthy discussion. I just find it frustratingly unequal that a Ranger, Necro, and Warrior and Poison me for so long that I usually die from it off just one hit from their skill.....just one hit. If I can't cure myself and have no monk to to it for me I am as good as dead. Now, the nay-sayers will tell me to bring a self cure. Ok thats fair That would force me to pick a specific 2ndary class to do this and I say that is complete crap. I still say that an ele need to have a similar hit and forget skill like Poison, cripple, bleed, disease etc. Strategically it only seem fair. In some battles a ranger spreads the love of his Poison to keep the other teams healer very busy because that Ranger knows his poison will be working for a very long time. Same the a Mesmer spreading around Phantasm and a Necro spreading around disease. All these degens skills make the Opponents Monk very busy and may burn their energy trying to keep up with heals.

The ele has jack and squat to make any enemy worry for long. If someone dies from meteor shower its because they didn't move. They burn for 7 seconds tops and they shrug it off. They are slowed for 10, big whoop. Maelstorm? bigger joke.

Look, I love my ele. I can be very effective playing it. I just think that after playing in some PvP and just watching how the ele's skills stack up to other classes skill..just maybe someone should look at the balance again and maybe, just maybe, up the burning duration a tad. OR maybe they should add the Crippled condition to it. So if you are burning you are also crippled just like when you have to run through lava! I understand what you are say. I said it before, and I'll say it again, GW MUST improve the healing abilities of the Mesmer and the Elementalist. Warriors get a healing signet (0 energy), and shouts to combat conditions. Rangers have troll ungeant (5 energy) and melandru's resilience (to combat hexes AND conditions), as well as healing spring (yeah, I know thats a big joke), and antidote signet (0 energy, cures poison, blindness and disease). Monks, well lets just say they have cure for everything that ailes you. Necromancers, Blood Renewal, Plague Sending, Plague Touch. Sure they also have nothing aginst hexes, but conditions go away easily. They have so many ways of healing (BR as mentioned, Life Siphon - requires enemy, etc.), most do require a corpse or foe to get heal. Ritualists, see monk. Assassin, they have a few ways of healing, but also no way to combat hexes or conditions (that I know of).

Elementalists and mesmers have horrible healing powers and no way of combating any conditions (mesmers have illusionary speed to delay crippling). Mesmers can remove hexes though. The only way for an Elementalist to heal is to cast spells. This reduces their energy and doesn't heal them nearly enough to be helpful. And Mesmers NEED a foe to heal, so if they are bleeding and no foes are around, they just have to sit there and die. At worst, Elementalists can cast armor of earth to heal a small bit.

If you don't want to rely on a single skill from another profession, that's fine. But changing the duration of burning or creating another health degen won't save you from IoR or Suffering or Poison or bleeding.

Honestly, I would like to know what type of elemental damage/skill/spell that will allow you to do a health degen condition?

As for AoE, Chaos Storm is a huge joke, more so than Maelstrom. As far as health degen is concerned, Mesmers and Necromancers should be the best at it. Hexes are their forte, they really can't do any direct damage otherwise. They just have conditional damage (yes Necros have Vampiric Bite, Gaze, Touch, Death Swarm, etc.) but they are single opponent spells/skills that don't have the damage capabilities that an Elementalist has. I've already heard that Mesmers' health degen isn't very good in PvP (removed too easily, takes too long to do damage, etc.) but that's they only non-conditional way they can do damage.

If anything, ANet SHOULD do something to improve an Elementalist's and Mesmer's healing.

I still don't think giving Elementalists more health degen will save you from others doing health degen on you.

Because of the elementalists' high energy availability, we're better suited to use self-heals from other professions than most other primaries are.

I wouldn't put better self-healing high on my wishlist for elementalist buffs. You make it sound like the eles self-healing is on par with Ether Prodigy as the best energymanagement in the game. Aura of Restoration is very poor. Yes at 13 ES is returns 367% health. But most of the time you cast your 25 energy skills at the start of a fight before your even taking hits. It does help take the strain off a monk when you heal for ~37 when you cast Fireball, but it really does suck at the same time.

Moving into other professions for there self heals just reduces your own effectiveness too.

Because of the elementalists' high energy availability, we're better suited to use self-heals from other professions than most other primaries are.

I wouldn't put better self-healing high on my wishlist for elementalist buffs. Though I don't think any profession should have to go into another profession to be effective. At that point you are just using a working profession to fix a broken one.