Elementalist should have never been forced into melee range. Anyone who wants to argue that point, take a step back from gameplay mechanics and just look at the issue from a thematic perspective. Here you have a frail person (low HP), in armor made of cloth, running headlong into a melee brawl with some mountain of flesh in plate armor, to willingly trade blows with them. All of this, while lacking the evades/agility of even a medium armor/health thief. That doesn't make any sense. No rational actor would do that. "Because magic" isn't really an answer, either. It's not as if the Elementalist has a unique relationship with arcane energy in the GW2 gameworld, every single class uses supernatural abilities, so it's a level playing field in that regard. The Elementalist has always been a thematic mess in this game, and the only fix is re-focusing the entire class, not just one elite spec, around ranged combat. D/D should have been, at most, a niche playstyle. Weaver as an elite spec is fine, but not if it's at the expense of the base class and other elites. It's fine to discuss gameplay mechanic issues, but IMO the issues with Elementalist are deeper than that. Anet needs to figure out what they want this class to be.