Elemental tier questions

[Desmodeus]

So just began to wonder, what is elemental tier in term of ingame effectiveness is there

From my own experience it looks like something like

• Fire
• Corrosion
• Storm
• Ice

Fire is widely avaliable on many classes - paladin, monk, chanter, wizard, priest - with very strong abilities to support it. Stuff like Dragon Thrashed,  Sacred Immolation, Turning Wheel easily push fire as a top of elements. But there are immunities which hurts a lot. Firebrand is also great weapon though probably less for end game unless specifically built around(in my opinion stuff like Tidefall and Grey Sleeper are much better in general performance)

Corrosion is probably second best, while it is much more rare - pretty much centered around druid and wizard, with bleak walker paladin, it is almost never run into immunities and Bitter Cut sabre is just insane for how easily it is to get and how strong it is

Lightning is pretty much druid toy with insanely strong storm spells and very very good Stormcaller bow for rangers and ciphers. But outside of that niche it kinda meh, even walking brutality called Monk has slightly more reason to focus on fire and acid prior to lightning. Wizard has some decent spell but in term of effect per action I found it not that good

Ice has some nice toys like that ice mine chant(fantastic on higher difficulties if you need to run away fast or have decent place to kite stuff out), Chill fog, frost pillar but it still represented by close to two classes(Cold chanter and cold wizard) with both being more effective focusing on other element and there are no primary ice weapons, so elemental talant can transition to weapon boost as well.

Thats how I personally ended up feeling but I wonder, is my opinion correct or am I missing something when ranking those elements?

[Chaospread]

Hi, more or less I agree with you. We can say that is more simple create a power build around elements in the order you give: fire, corrode, storm and ice.
Maybe corrode could be more damaging against enemies because there are lower DR against it and less immunities, but you have to build around bittercut and maybe item like touche of rot or, better IMHO, a corrode Druid. Fire is more available, for sure.
Regard shocking and ice, ice is really a poor element except maybe for chanter, or for an ice wizard and ice druid, but this two class are better with fire element as you pointed. There are no excellent ice item and usually enemies suffer more for other elements. There are very good build about wizard and druid with ice, but ice isn't so important actually, I think shocking is the best for druid and wizard perfom better with fire.
At the end, perhaps we can dibate about fire or corrode as the best, but in broad terms I repeat, I agree 99% with you.