doctorhook
Legend
I think a lot of people thought so, although in hindsight, there's no reason they couldn't have been in 4E all along. I suppose the reason for waiting two years to publish them was to establish that "pure" elementals are definitely not the norm now; 4E has given us a much more diverse elemental landscape, no doubt. (Consider the reason for mixed-elementals in the first two Monster Manuals to be a sort of "elemental affirmative action"; this way, mono-elementals don't get all the glory by coming first.)That was a welcome surprise. I thought unflavored elementals were gone the way of the dodo. Woot!
Now that they are printing mono-elementals, I'd like to see them do all the para- and quasi-elementals for 4E, stripped of the obsolete cosmological basis, I mean. In 4E, we aren't restricted to only four elements anymore, and so there's no reason we couldn't have "pure" mud elementals or smoke elementals or vacuum elementals or lightning elementals; similarly, a magma elemental needn't be assumed to be a fusion of elemental fire and earth -- now it's just living elemental magma, period.