So I’ve been thinking about what makes cantrips so much stronger than just about everything else, and the is what I’ve come up with.
Firstly, cantrip traits are not competing with strong grandmaster skills.
With the new patch, a large number of our traits got compiled into bundles, and for the most part this is a good thing. Cantrips, however, remained at master and adept tier while both recharge traits for Arcane and Glyphs were moved up to Grandmaster in the Arcane and Earth lines respectively.
In addition to this, the traits themselves are placed nicely in relevant lines (recovery in water, offense in fire) while the same cannot be said at all for Inscription and Conjurer (Air line for a slow-cast long-term effects? Seems legit). Frankly speaking Conjurer belongs in Arcane and nowhere else until they give it a more elementally aligned effect (no, getting an aura every time an uncommon condition is fulfilled does not count).
This is terrible.
Written in Stone is especially bad for this, mostly because the Earth line as a whole is mediocre. Elemental Surge competes with Evasive Arcana, which sucks, but the traitline as a whole is still nice.
The exception to this is Conjurer and Inscription, but Conjurer sucks (though it does give you fire auras if you pick it up yourself, if I remember correctly) and Inscription is similarly bad. Conjurer also gives you a meaningless boost to charges which assumes you will be basically just autoing for like ten seconds, with no CDR. Yeah.
Secondly, cantrips have trait synergy, and within the same line at that.
Cleansing Water and Soothing Disruption. It’s pretty cool.
No other type has that. Conjurer is on the verge of one, but gaining two stacks of might and a slightly longer fire aura is hardly synergy if that requires you to both cast your conjure and then pick up your second weapon, which hardly ever happens. Flame Axe would be the only one that even remotely has synergy there.
Thirdly, cantrips are nearly universally useful, but all other types have horribly weak skills in the set.
Arcane actually has a pretty good set with Arcane Brilliance, Wave and Shield, all of which are solid skills, but Arcane Power and Blast are weaksauce. The only time Arcane Power is even moderately useful is against a single target (the guaranteed crits are shared among all targets, so a single fireball on a mesmer with illusions neaby could consume four of your five charges) if you have Elemental Surge and are not in Fire. Arcane Blast has exactly zero utility. Missing an elite, too.
Glyphs have Glyph of Storms. Glyph of Elementals is okay simply because it is the only elite which doesn’t involve losing all of our skills. The rest basically don’t exist, because they are useless to the point of not having any measurable impact, for completely obvious reasons (GoEP is entirely random and doesn’t do much, GoLE can basically be ignored by any opponent, GoR actually just sucks in pretty much every situation ever. Mist Form is better at reviving than GoR is). Glyph of Harmony is okay and nothing else.
Conjures have Fiery Greatsword, which is at this point essentially an OOC weapon, and Frost Bow, which is useful in dungeons or against distracted targets. Lightning Hammer is just weaksauce in PvP and WvW, and close in PvE, Fire Axe is just weak and doesn’t give you anything special, and Earth Shield gives you a bunch of cool toys which are too clunky to use.
Pretty much all the signets are just bad, with nearly useless passives and actives (And bad cooldowns too). No elite either.
On the other hand you have cantrips, which give you your only source of stability outside of one 2s in Earth, are all instant cast outside of Ether Renewal and Tornado, have an instant damaging teleport, our only utility invulnerability, and our only useful non-trait cleanse, and as of this patch now also have a heal and an elite. They are all worth considering even if you have no traits invested in them or even if you invested in other trait types.
So yeah, Anet get on this pls.
TL;DR: Cantrips have good trait synergy and placement, and are universally useful. Glyphs, Conjures, Arcana, and Signets have none of these, and lack a full set of useful skills.