Guild Wars 2

I remember when Elite skills used to be the defining element in a build – of course this was back in GW1.

In GW2 they don’t feel “elite” at all – they’re just a skill slot with a restricted set of options. None of them feel particularly good, strong or things that I would care very much about.

Yes some of them are useful in different situations – but they are not game-changing.
The bigger problem I see is that they are not FUN. I do not look forward to using it – I never feel that “things are going bad better use my elite to turn things around” is something that happens.
Elite skills are somewhat decent gameplay-wise but they lack that “wow” factor – the way they are now I feel that they should be called “additional” or “auxiliary” or even “extra” skills – but not elite.

You know, I have thought about what would happen if they just added them to the utility skills pool without any special declaration (just their high cool down) and replaced the elite skill slot with a 4th utility slot.
The thing is, with all classes I play would probably end up using NONE of them. The more important and somewhat new thing is, I would also not abuse the hell out of the fact I could potentially slot 4 ‘elite’ skills. It just wouldn’t be beneficial.
I’d take a ‘free’ Signet of Air or another of the much better utility shouts over Rebound in order to manually avoid death any day.

As has been said by a number of people: that speaks a lot for those skills alledged eliteness. However, it also offers Anet a cheap quick fix, considering they don’t want to redo and / or add another 3 elite skills per class.