Li Shenron
Legend
I am also disillused by how elementalism is always represented in D&D. I do like the 3.0 Elemental Savant prestige class (actually I don't think it needed much of a revision), and I also have EA: Elementalism which I really like as well. And finally I like the Shugenja as well, which is an elementalist in its own way 
But there's still two things which have become too strong cliche':
1) the fact that each element must have an energy association
2) the idea that the cost of specialisation in one element is always a banned opposite
To get past these cliches, in my opinion the best way would have been to drop the idea of a unified prestige class, and have one separate PrCl for each of the 4 elements. It's possible to have a single PrCl for ENERGY TYPES (fire, cold, electricity, acid, sonic), but as soon as one pretends to set an association with the four traditional elements (fire, water, earth, air) it's kind of impossible to make it even. That's just my 2cp
But there's still two things which have become too strong cliche':
1) the fact that each element must have an energy association
2) the idea that the cost of specialisation in one element is always a banned opposite
To get past these cliches, in my opinion the best way would have been to drop the idea of a unified prestige class, and have one separate PrCl for each of the 4 elements. It's possible to have a single PrCl for ENERGY TYPES (fire, cold, electricity, acid, sonic), but as soon as one pretends to set an association with the four traditional elements (fire, water, earth, air) it's kind of impossible to make it even. That's just my 2cp
