Every elite spec outshines Tempest (except possibly daredevil and Dragonhunter.) Yes, base elementalist is still to an extent ridiculously good, but that’s a different argument.
Currently, if you want the job of a support done, you can literally request just about any other elite spec or simply request a base Elementalist. Reasons being:
Elementalists have been a jack of all trades. They do everything reasonably well. This is a clear downfall of the Tempest. Tempest can do all the might stacking in the world, Tempest can keep allies mobile, Tempest can heal allies, Tempest can grant so much protection, and I have a problem with that. Tempest is a mere amplification of Elementalist. Not only does it do just about nothing to change the playstyle, a lot of the class mechanics are counterproductive to what it is achieving to do.
Overloading Water is my best example. As cooldown reduction on attunement on overloads have been removed, Overloading water for a 3500~ (with no healing power heal) requires you to wait entering water attunement for ~29 (5 seconds to charge, 4 seconds to cast, 20 seconds after casting and swapping out) seconds after initially entering it. Now as a healer Tempest, you’ll clearly take water attunement, both for the heal and for aurashare. The idea is at the start and end of a 30 second period, you would have entered water attunement, overload, and then left water attunement for a 6100~ heal over 30 seconds (3500~ + 1300×2). Or, you could have continued to dps this whole time, swapped into water attunement a total of 4 times for about 5200~ heal and upkeeped Soothing Mist the entire time. With Evasive Arcana, it would be 8700 heal with an Overload, 10400 without Overload (and once again 100% uptime on soothing mist, not to mention Regen from Arcana. The 500~ extra heal on Aura doesn’t come close to cutting just doubling Soothing Mist. (Once again, all without healing power.) Swapping into Water attunement twice has close to double the healing power coeffecient as overloading water. Choosing to not overload water has better healing than choosing to overload it: at the same time, OVERLOADING WATER DOES NOTHING DIFFERENT THAN WHAT WATER ALREADY DID.
Auras were the worst way to go with Tempest. They provide very little support in PvE because of how kitten they are. They require you to take a hit for it to be of any real use, they conditions they apply is usually negligable (why grant more might to allies upon getting hit when you can literally keep 25 might up 100% on allies without it as Tempest with fire field blasting, fire overload, might on shouts, Heat Sync, do I need to go more?) and Magnetic Aura’s inherent problem is you have to actually line yourself up in a projectile’s way to reflect it, meaning (a) AoE splash projectiles means if you don’t perfectly get in its path, you’ll get hit by the AoE instead of reflecting it and (b) Anet has been programming projectiles that can’t be reflected (look at Horrik, Mai Trin Cannons, and her whirl attack). 1 second of burning to the person who attacked you won’t cut it: make the auras DO some meaningful support.
If Elementalist shouts were huge cooldown abiltiies that really made a difference, I’d love them. I.E. Instead of “Feel the Burn!” if you had a shout that created a ash plumes that specifically did [enter effect here] against an enemy who hit an ally within the plumes who had fire aura, dear god would I love that. Why not make the shouts amplify the auras instead of applying them? EotS could cause enemies (who hit an ally within the area with Shocking Aura) gain static electricity, getting being hit for extra damage dependent on how much they moved during this debuff. Shock and Aftershock causes Magnetic Aura to slow down projectiles nearby on top of reflecting them.
Even if this would require Anet putting like a debuff saying “Anyone taking Tempest will deal 50% less damage,” if it meant I could actually support people in a way that Elementalist could not, I would be just fine.