Air Elemental race

Overview
Elementals are incarnations of the elements that compose existence. They are Elemental type monsters.

Unlike the pen and paper version of air elementals, the ones in DDO feature several abilities that do not allow any saving throws.

Combat

 * Whirlwind - Bludgeoning damage, reflex save for half
 * Gust of Wind

Qualities

 * Knockback - no save
 * Knockdown - Str/Dex based save

Melee characters are likely to have a more difficult time in combat with Air Elementals due the fact that these knockback and knockdown effects only affect characters at close range. Ranged characters and casters can damage or instakill the elementals without ever coming in range of these debilitating abilities.

On Update 17 those abilities can be prevented by active blocking, and you have better visual and sound clues of when they are in whirlwind mode (when they just try to knock you over) and attack mode (when they only throw around those that come too close).

History
Some time ago, Turbine heavily nerfed air elementals, based on player feedback that their knockback/knockdown abilities were too powerful. It went from a 100% chance, to roughly 1%.

Recently they went back on this change, so air elementals are back to their 100% full strength, 100% chance to knockback/knockdown, and set their knockdown DC to be based on their constitution score. For the most part this made all high level air elementals more powerful as previously their knockdown DCs were a moderate, fixed DC. Now they are much more dangerous their original incarnations, particularly for melee characters.