sOMETHING NOT COVERED

I will say that I have played games from many many years..

specialists of this type, tend to be MORE condition damage, and NOT POWER..
POWER tends to be with physical damage and weapons.

This group tends to use affects FROM weapons, and not the weapons.
So, comes my question..

POWER?? is for what?? Iv got good weapons but it doesnt seem to be helping DAMAGE..as these are physical weapons, I DONT HIT them..

Condition damage? this seems like what this person needs. but the builds dont show this.

Nothing I have seen in GW2 wiki or their site, says WHAT is the better focus for this character.
A rabid/carrion build sounds good. Lots of added health/healing and TONS of condition damage.

Another thing Im seeing, tends to be that the spells REALLY dont hit hard.
We have Weak armour and spells that cant hit NEAR as hard as the other professions.
My thief and eng, tend to get MUCH more damage.. They can stand up and take GOOD hits, and unleash tons of damage. But this is POWER..added to their weapons. In groups of 2, we have hit some HARD champs in the game.
The Ele, tends to stay away from fights with more then 2-3 NPC's..

Guild Wars 2 does tend to confuse people with the armor and damage calculators since there really isn't a difference between light/medium/heavy armor nor a difference between physical and magical damage.

Lets start with damage since that was your main question. There are 2 types of ways to cause damage in the game, direct damage and condition damage.

Direct Damage is Meele, ranged and projectile ranged. (Some ranged skills such as a mesmers #1 Greatsword attack are ranged or even magical but not considered projectile attacks like from bows or guns yet have some attacks that are like their #2 skill) There is no distinction between phyiscal and magical damage it is calculated the same based off your total Power/Attack and the targets toughness/armor. To increase direct damage you must increase your overall Power. Also note that critical damage is another perk and you can stack its bonus to give greater damage on critical hits.

Condition Damage is damage dealt through conditions such as Bleed, burn and poison. By boosting your Condition damage stats you will increase the damage your target takes after you apply those conditions to them. Also note Condition damage bypasses toughness. Some conditions like bleed can be stacked and are calculated seperatly (up to 25 stacks) while burn and poison stack duration and ONLY the person who applied the longest lasting will see a tick from burn or poison until theirs wears off or is replaced by another persons.

As for total defense it is calculated in 2 ways armor and toughness. Armor you get from well your armor and toughness you get by stacking the toughness stat from traits or armor. Together these add up to your total armor or total defense bonus which reduces DIRECT damage only. Condition damage can not be minimized from defense you can only out last it with lots of Vitality/HP or remove the conditions with a skill.

I can see how its working..
And the Ele has no REAL direct damage. Unless you consider Earth, and throwing STONES to bleed.

Iv tried the Thief and the Eng...Doing physical damage has to defeat Armour and toughness..And they do very well.
The Ele, has his abilities, but EARTH seems abit weak. (IMHO) Earth is throwing stones/rocks/shatters Which should be doing Physical and Condition damage. The Condition damage Isnt FAST as in doing Physical...You have to Wait for this damage to get done..Even if you know he is dead, you cant walk away as the opponent is still fighting.
You can throw 1000 shards at the person, have them Bleeding out the ears/nose/every orifice but he will still be standing for the next 10 seconds.. I can see the others being Mostly Condition damage. Fire just burns and melts, Water is mostly healing and trying to drown someone, which Confusion should be part of. Air should add abit of stun, with lightning... But, Earth is part physical damage, and I dont see it happening.

Now, If you just want to do it metaphysical... Then why do I need a knife in my hand? Alternative to a Shard? Ok..
then at LEAST let me do MORE critical.. Unless we focus on crits, we are very low in getting them. If we bypass Armour, you have to consider we arent Just giving this person Cuts and bleeding him to death. That would be Torture. And we could never get a critical..we are Scratching him to death..If he turns around and offers him Back, he might LIKE IT..

Nothing in the game is REAL anyways.

Its all pixels.

Anet and NCsoft decided to remove the Holy Trinity of Tank/Healer/DamageDealer and allow any profession to take these rolls if they wanted to, though some are better at certain ones than others. Its not a perfect system, but no game has a perfect system.

All Damage is treated the same expcept for damage done by conditions. If you understand how its working than accept that its working. If you want to agrue over the magical vs physical perspective there is no point. The game doesn't take that into account. Damage is damage.