After reading a lot of the comments to this thread, I find I agree on a lot of them. Such as:
increasing the range of the hammer
useless healing and utility skills
no point using f5 since you can rely on other professions for combo, hard to gain energy, etc. [really, i think this makes the class really useless, and scrap-worthy]
my additional take would be:
Immutable Stone: What's the point of gaining an aura depending on the attunement when clearly its only accessible by earth skills? So naturally isn't it always going to be auras from earth? unless you can weave other elements at the same time--but no.
Augments: no traits available. it takes too much time to get energy for f5 and the payoff to be able to cast the right skill with the right attunement is too hard. id rather just slot in a better utility than use this one
Overall Hammer: it felt like no one really thought about how to use this new spec and weapon. I feel like there was a deadline at the office to submit a new spec, and one of the people who are responsible, just glossed over previous guild wars builds and decided to go with a hammer and a flying ball that doesn't move, because they couldn't be bothered in thinking more from the hangover from last night's party. So they just submitted whatever, without so much as a research or internet browsing involved. Is the office politics really that bad?
Highly subjective below:
For the Canthan feel, which i thought was based out of Asian inspirations from gw1, this was sorely lacking. There are jangshis, mikos, guqin, Hindu gods, folklore that they could have sourced for a new spec for ele, and none of this hammer-weilding-stuff ever came close to that. What a simple find, closely related to this was Uchide no kozuchi, which has a hammer in it. But that's it. No other similarities or inspirations can be drawn. Whoever thought of this at a concept level, needs more coffee. Since it was doomed at the start and just rolled over to a hot mess when i played it in beta.
