Seems to be popular at the moment to post random idiotic theories about why ele is strong right now, and why it’s so delicate to balance. Here’s my take on it, happy cringeing!
Before we start:
Elementalist has the lowest amount of base defense granted by the game (no extra HP, no extra toughness). As such it has to make up for that via gear & traits & skills and effects & scaling factors. Read: it has to be above-average in 1+ of those to be able to get the same end results as other classes.
Celestial gear:
Celestial gear has a higher item budget than all other gear. For almost all builds some of that item budget is either wasted on stats that have poor scaling (say condi on ele staff, healing power for many classes) or go beyond your target stats (toughness or vitality on bulky classes) or don’t offer enough offense (cele damage without might stacks).
D/D uses all the stats with appropriate (or are they?) scaling factors. Ele can cover the low base offense provided by cele with its might stacking capabilities.
The way D/D works:
D/D builds might stacks to up its power/condidamage. Combined with good access to burning and good power scaling this leads to very good damage (e.g. Fire/Water/Arcana CEle).
D/D uses its good access to fury to cover for its low base crit.
D/D uses protection/vigor and a good evasion frame % to lower damage intake, and uses strong healing to heal back up. While an ele can be bursted down easily if they are not reacting (low base survivability) – the low damage intake of an active CEle plus its good healing per second leads to a very sturdy class. Assuming enough burst-survivability, the longer the fight goes the more relevant the longterm HP-lost to HP-healed ratio becomes.
D/D rotates through the elements quickly in an effort to spam boons – each of them covering different aspects (burst survivability, healing, offense) – and gain access to its skills.
There is hardly any counterplay to boonspam, and the class whose theme that is is (regarded as) bad. Take away one or two key boons and the whole D/D concept falls apart: take protection and vigor so the damage intake becomes unmanageable, strip might and turn the ele into a toothless bunker.
Elementalist trait lines:
The way the trait system works for most classes is each line has a theme (burning, a certain weapon, stealth, you name it). As such you can assemble a kit to fit to the situation at hand.
For Ele the themes of the trait lines are much more fundamental. Water is the reactive survivability line, Earth is the proactive one. Fire and Air are the damage lines. Arcana is a strong all-purpose line.
IMO this is the crux. You take just enough survivability lines to live and then pick your best DPS lines. For pve that means no survivability lines – rather rely on utilities and outsource defense to group members – and all damage. For pvp/wvw that means picking the strong survivability lines Water and Arcana, and then being free to pick a strong damage line, Fire being fotm.
I don’t know how to fix this problem without breaking any and all immersion or elemental themes. There are efforts like dumping damage modifiers into the water line and the like. For pvp Ele still feels locked into Water&Arcana to even become a whole class.
I think to talk about possible solutions we have to first share a common observation of the class (what is D/D objectively) and THEN we can delve into what we consider problematic (symptoms) and THEN talk about solutions that don’t break the class (core issues and fixing). For those less productively-inclined; take off the gloves and show me what you got, happy trolling!