Ice savvy or earth savvy is the way to go?

[HastyPudding]

You are making it sound like a particular savant can ONLY cast spells from its chosen element. What is to stop an earth savant/ice secondary sorc from rapidly throwing down otilukes, acid rain, cone of cold, acid blast on a group of webbed critters? I think that qualifies as 'massive AoE damage'. One particular savant type is no better or worse than another for killing trash and spamming AoE spells. Player skill, spell selection and proper targeting is what kills trash fast, not air verses earth, etc.

And why do others make it sound like earth is superior to everything when it comes to damage when it clearly doesn't match the numbers of either air or water and takes twice as long to kill things?

Regardless of what savant you pick, and regardless of what spells you spam, air still has the superiority of killing trash mobs very quickly by using ONLY lightning spells, thus maximizing the damage due to the savant's inherent caster level bonuses, and thus using less SP-per-damage ratio in doing so. Just as nobody expects to hit the crits of a metamagic'd polar ray of a water savant, too, or be as good at damage over time and persistent aoe's as an earth savant.

It always comes down to DC's, which is the air savant's weakness as it is 99% reliant on evocation DC's for damage, and because without past lives or good gear, it doesn't function well. Thus, people pass over it and say its not worth doing because they do not put the time nor the effort into doing so. I'm just tired of this epic hate for air savants and people just press the easy button, which is arguably the earth savant due to the sheer mass of persistent AoE's it has and no dependance on DC's like the other 3 savants. Water is caught in between the two.