Elementalist is simply the worst class for sPvP, period. And most of the things I will mention here can surely be applied to other PVP situations as well.
Let me breakt this class down roughly. (wall of text inc)
TL;DR: This class need some serious rework, and if I look through other GW2 boards, I am not the only one who thinks so.
Attack
-------
Going to kill anything in mid range-meele ( dagger/dagger or scepter/dagger ) is suicidal. Everything, and I really mean everything, will instantly focus you and kill you within seconds.
That's why you have to stick with your rod.
Fire
Fireball. 1500dmg per hit, relative slow attack. Does some aoe. Nobody really cares about this attack in particular. It is just something that you have on autocast. If god allows it, you may crit from time to time with it and do some 3000dmg. Woho. It really is almost the only way to "burst" somebody dead.
Lava Font. What a joke of a skill. If somebody would decide to go brain afk and stand in the font then yes, this skill would do some dmg. Just that nobody does. They just take a few steps and they are out of the AOE.
Flame Burst. The only skill that is okay-ish. Does some nice damage over time as long as the enemy does not remove the dot.
Burning Retreat. Only good for getting away. However, every single badplayer and his mom are able to chase you. It is no real retreat skill at all. The fire doesn't do noteworthy dmg either.
Meteor Shower. Here we have a skill that might do some dmg, as long as you cast it on groups of people and, again, they do not simply move out of it. Cast time is so brutally long that you should have some really good positioning to get that skill out.
Air
Chain Lightning. Lol. No comment. No dmg, does jump from player to play to make no dmg on them as well. People have like 20.000hp, this skill does some 600dmg. That's just cute.
Lightning Surge. Is a good skill. Does mediocre dmg, but it's some sort of control if you manage to cast it "smartly". But if you really do not cast it on random, it is so fucking situational that it's almost useless again. You first have to be in Air and then cast it on a target that is supposed to use some heavy burst skill that you want him to miss. Good luck predicting what he is going to do, switch and cast at the right moment. 99,99% of the time I just cast it on random.
Gust. It's a good CC.
Windborne Speed. The range needs to be seriously increased. If you want to buff your teammates, you have to stand RIGHT NEXT TO THEM. This, however, is total bullshit since you have to stay away from the enemy and thus from almost all of your friends. Most of the time it's just a retreat skill for myself.
Static Field. Best CC the elementalist has in my eyes. Works pretty much like Veigar stun in LoL... The cooldown might be a tad long with 40 seconds considering that the stun is only 2 seconds.
Earth
Stoning. It's my only weapon against nasty meeles. Weakness helps to get away from meeles, because there is nothing that you can do in stone to actually kill them. If you switch, you lose weakness from stoning and they burst you within seconds. The damage is again just low.
Eruption. It's nice and works somehow like Lava Font. If you manage to get it one a stuned/knockdowned/braindead enemy, it will do some really nice damage, especially over the condition.
Magnetic Aura. Doesn't help against meeles and doesn't help against casters / conditions. It's just something to piss off people with guns and bows for some seconds and that's it. I never managed to outplay a Warrior or Ranger with this. 5 seconds are just 1 or 2 skills anyway, so nothing gamechanging is going to happen.
Unsteady Ground. It's a really good mass slow, but I don't understand why it even makes dmg. I mean, really? 93 base dmg? Comon' It does help you, or your teammate(s) to escape / gain some control.
Shockwave. Again a good single target CC with, at best, medium dmg. But since controlling is again a priority here, that skill works fine in my eyes.
Water
Water Blast. Does some 300 dmg (lol) and heals for some 350 (even more lol) while others hit for 3000+. Sorry but that's really uesless in my eyes. Either increase the amount that's healed, or add some extra effect like slow. I have never saved any1 with that so far.
Ice Spike. It's a nice skill that is relatively easy to cast since it falls down quite fast. Damage is acceptable since it gives 5% extra vulnerability.
Frozen Ground. The Chilled effect is really nice, but a 40 seconds cooldown on something that only lasts for 5 seconds? The cooldown should be lowered imo.
Geyser. It's just a small aoe heal that really nobody gives a fuck about. I've even seen people run away from it. If you manage to heal somebody with it, cool. But it heals for like 2 ticks or any kind of dot.
Healing Rain. It's a good aoe heal and together with Geyser you can actually heal about 50% of HP, but for that other do have to stand within the Geyser. It even removes a condition, which makes this skill acceptable.
----------------------------
In order to be fully effective, you have to constantly switch between your attunements, which brings me to stance-dancing.
Why the eff do we have such a huge cooldown on our attunement switching? 12 seconds is just way too long, seriously. You cannot make any smart and successfull combos with such a huge CD and I think that's a big issue. Lower it to 6 seconds and make it a 0,5gcd instead of 1,5. Like this we do not have to be chess players and think 10 moves in advance to play this class (since other do not have to do that either).
Another thing is, if you cast Meteor, you only have to cast it until aprox half of its casttime, or until the first meteor hits the ground, after that, you can again start to freely move around and the Meteor will still be cast properly. It's actually a good thing for us, but a bug nonetheless.
However, if you dare to move before that, your meteor gets locked (just like Healing Rain) for 4 seconds. I mean, why? Why do we have to be punished for aborting a skill? I fail to see any logic behind that other than "just because".
Defense
--------------
Since everyone wants to kill an Elementalist over anything else that moves on a battleground, you would expect us to be a "high give high receive" class, but nah bro. We are just a "low give high receive but good at running away class".
Let's put it like this. If you have a soldier or an adventurer on you and you do not have Mistform, Eartharmor and Lightningbolt, you are dead. I've tried all kinds of combinations regarding my slots, but those three are the only ones that will give you a free escape if you do not mess them up. However, getting on distance is not enough for an Elementalist, since once you stop moving, you die. You have to keep running, literally, since they will chase you. And they will get you if you stop. You cannot just decide to just fight back when a Warrie or Thief approaches you, since you are no 1on1 class.
And have fun trying to kite a Thief who goes stealth every few seconds, which makes you lose your target so you can't even CC him properly since you first have to target him, change camera position, press buttons, just for him to disappear once more and be right at your ass, bursting you down. Since ~70% of my enemies are Thiefs, I find this very depressing.
Cooldown on every escape skill is enormous, going from 45 seconds to 90 seconds, which makes them a "use once and hope you get away with it" skill.
Most of the time I really do get away, but what's the use of it? My HP is often so low that I cannot simply go back to the fight, even on max distance. I do heal myself up, but never over 50/60% of my HP, which leaves me again very vulnerable and thus a desired focus target for just about anyone. I have to wait for my escape skills to be read again, or I will just die in every groupfight.
General CC and support
-------------
Really the only thing I like about the Elementalist is my CC and the support I have. I can stun somebody, I can slow him just to stun him again. I can heal my mates, which no other class can do like me. But that's really just about it. I am going to try a full heal/support char tomorrow, just to see if it's any good.
General things about the Elementalist
------------
The skill requirement to play this class is extremely high in comparison with just about any other class right now, while the results are freaking low and unrewarding.
In order to deal some damage you have to watch out for your positioning, get your meteor out, ask for people to stay still and accept damage from your static aoe spells and hope that nobody focuses you.
Once you are focused by one or even more people, all your damage is gone. If you try to fight them, you are dead. They will just burst you down, so you have to run away. While running away you make zero dmg as well, and your support drops to almost zero, too. The only good thing is that you keep one or two people busy with running away from them while they chase you for a few seconds. Once you managed to get away, you have to most likely heal you up and reposition you. However, most of the time the fight is either won by the time you are back, or so horribly lost that you make no difference anymore and you can just walk away again or die a "honorable" death while trying to make some dmg. Or you can /dance. It really is the same.
We are good supporters, but we can either focus on supporting the team, or doing dmg. If we want to be recognizable supporters, we have to drop dmg also via Traits.
We also have no "gimicky" skills like Stealth or Cloning. I mean, just how annoying is this cloning crap? It always takes me so long to finally find the real Mesmer that, by the time I finally found him, he can cast them anew. The cooldown on two clones is 45 seconds base afaik. Oh, and there is Decoy, which gives him stealth AND creates a clone. Dafuq?
I do not even want to talk about stealth. Just the fact that you lose your target when a Thief uses it is so utterly retarded that I have no words for it.
Another thing is the support that YOU receive. Almost all classes have some area of effect that would be helpfull to you. Just that it never reaches you, since you are always on max distance to everything that happens. Blinding Powder? Nope. Frost Spirit? Nope. The list can go on, and go on, and go on.
The only way to do some dmg in PVP is to stack Might, and stack even more might and hope that nobody sees you.
Now, if you think I am writing complete bullshit, please address my points and tell me where. I have NOT mastered this class, nor this game. I do not think of myself as even a mediocre gamer so far, but other players on the battlegrounds aren't that good either since the game is relatively new and my friends, who are all playing other classes, tell me that they do not have the same issues, even remotely.
I do not wish to change to some other class already just because I have the feeling that Elementalist is broken in PVP. The class makes a lot of fun in PvE and a mage has always been my favorite class in just about any RPG.
But PVP is a huge part of GW2 and I want to put a big focus on it once I hit 80. I'd just like to see some reworks done on this class to make it more competitive.
Right now I feel like a WoW Vanilla Paladin.