i would put glyph of elemental power in the '1 of your choice' place, its not completely needed. as for secondaries... it hardly matters. the best way to know a spike team is if you see alot of eles with really random secondaries (i.e. not used)
Frozen Soil blows. It dies faster than it takes you to put it down.
You have your stapes and then a few slots for diversity:
stapes:
16 air
Lightning Orb
Chain Lightning
Lightning Strike
Air Attunement
You need 1 form of energy management.
Ele attunement (garbage)
Glyph of Energy (decent with chain lightning spam otherwise not that great)
Ether Renewal (godly)
For secondary, mesmer or necro. Necro for rend (a spike team MUST have rend, multiple copies). Mesmer for energy management (channeling, power drain, energy drain).
personally, i dont really consider any ele a spiker build unless they put in lightning surge... because those single hit, they are really not that big of a spike... more like daily living "i hit you once" stuff.
the real typical spike would be lightning surge>lightning orb>lightning strike. Ever since this got too popular, everyone know how to counter it... but I am sure you still can use it quite well in random arena.
Think I have to agree with you on that one Zeru. I personally don't think spirits are as beneficial as other skills to an aeromancer.
My current setup is:
E/Mo
Lightning Surge
Chain Lightning
Lightning Orb
Enervating Charge
Lightning Strike
Whirlwind(Sub out for res spell if needed)
Air Attunement
Aura of Restoration
14 Air(+1 Rune, +1 Headgear)
13 Energy Storage(+1 rune)
Generally, if you're going for effectiveness, either Pyro or Aero armors are best, since many of the elemental attacks you're likely to come across are going to be either one of these. Geo and Hydro are somewhat less common, but they are still useable.
For an organized spike, not just ganking one target, its essentially all about correctly using Chain Lightning (along with disenchants). I personally prefer Arcane Echo + Chain + Glyph of Energy + Chain.