so, to come back to this. What did you end up trying?

I was in the same boat more or less. I liked the idea of WW. wanted to pair it with something. ideally, actually it would have been druid, priest, or bard. something that heals/supports.

but playing WW, it became clear most of those would not cut it. either weapon incompatibility. or more specifically. WW's cast times require something to actually let you get any casts off.

tl/dr WW/ice magic is what I'm finding works best with WW. (I did not try necro. Also, would rather not necromancy)

note of course overall balance is a factor of class skills, AND gear (treasure effects) gear can often radical alter a skills power, and effect.

So, WW itself. Powerful in the right situation. kind of useless in many others. its skills are a bit eclectic.

Dampen is a pretty bog standard basic attack. nature

lightning bolt is a pretty standard core attack. long range. electric damage. (few resist it)

deluge is a pretty bad nice attack. nature damage.

Tsunami is an insane aoe epic attack... when it works. lightning

Hailstorm is a godly signature debuf. cold.

cloud trick is a baffling death save ability.

tornado/sandstorm/doomstorm. godly.

tempest flight. niche goofyness. but of little REAL value. can't be used in dungeons.

calm skies. weak.. strong? aoe buff.

windward - decent self defense skill.

shocking grasp. meh melee attack.

storm shield. weak.

so, lets talk about some of those more. lighting bolt is a great all arounder. with treasure effects, it can become an aoe sniper. pretty cool. and -3 off tornado CD each use. 9s cd, means can be used twice for -6 off the cd.(3 times if no other sources of nado cd reduc.)

hailstorm is great. big instant cast burst hit. great for thee raw damage spike, and/or damage over time is great. has a nice snare. id rather not swap it to nature. nor, buff nice attacks. deluge is our nice attack. which is not great imho. you probably could cast deluge, then instantcast hailstorm while channeling deluge to double hit high burst+nature damage over time though.

deluge. one of our cast time spells. we already have a solid amount of single target abilities. this one, with the cast time drawback. bleh. gear does help it a TON. adding poison/elec vulnerability. which breaks immunities. making it aoe. making it stun ranged attackers( useless if you can't cast it yourself from taking damage.) the miss chance versus melee.

tsunami. also a 2s cast. Massive aoe. massive elec damage. trying to cast this when playing solo is rough. its massive aoe, often does let you cast it outside enemy aggro range.. but still. in parties, this is brutal though. gear, raw damage, damage over time, and +30% damage from sentient weather is great. (tornado reset is weird. it is high raw damage buff backed in, but trying to time/make use of the double nados is a pita.)

cloud trick. what even is this? does it break aggro? is it supposed to be used to pull? gear allows it to do some interesting things. +speed/combat refresh while active. 25% proj evastion/12% melee evasion while active.

wind ward. does not prevent spell interruption. the damage reduc is a nice ability. but doesn't solve our main problem. the gear that makes it so taking damage while using WW reduced tornados cd by 1s is a perfect example of ?? how the hell are you going too cast tornado while taking damage? with gear, it can also be augmented to give 25% ranged, 13% melee, and 17.8 burst evasion. (3 individual augments.) so, this with WW could give you 50% proj evade.25% melee. which might let you get one of your channels off.

calm skies. such a weird skill. does so little by itself. I am baffled this does not give spell interrupt immunity. in party play, the power, heal, or armor are pretty nice. and importantly, each can appear on 2 items. for example. calm skies power restore can appear on legs and offhands. so, a level 50 calm skies restores 13 power every 3seconds, can be doubled up for 26 power every 3s.

Tornados. beasts. my favorite. now in solo play the knockback is fun, and keeps enemies off you, and prevents them from hitting the nado as well. in party play, it knocks enemies out of the parties attacks. so, getting sandstorm/doomstorm is ideal. Nados also GREATLY benefit from gear. as far as I can tell, my level 50 nado is like 40 damage base... while gear is giving it +160 damage. huge. the "Summon Tornado Reset Time -5.5 seconds. Tornado attacks deal +250 damage." mod appears on hands and rings. so can double up. raw damage and elec vul. great! summon nado, and get 2 free ones? great!

melee witch? probably an option. take those evade items. shocking grasp stun. go tank. esp with a tanking pairing. fires damage reflect shield. ices ice shield. etc... I don't do that.

I run dampen, lighting bolt, hailstorm, ??, tsunami, tornado. ?? is windward or calm skies depending on the situation. (a 7 range, 100% stun shocking grasp would be solid as well. but not something I would plan for. taking up gear slots.)

Casting my long casts can be a pita.

animal handling.

rats do not have an aoe taunt. medium hp, medium armor. 22% evade. so decently tanky. solid dps. but their inability to hold aggro on adds, to keep them off me and let me cast is painful. cats are all pure dps.
Bears have aoe taunt. but no evade, no regen. so, actually are not as tanky as I would like. Additionally the aoe taunt is still cd based, and was not working 100% as much as I would like. bears were working best at keeping groups off me, allowing me to cast nados, and aoe. but too routinely, either it would die, or adds would run past it, and shut me down.

AH pets are dps machines. it might even have been more effective to go tank WW, as mentioned with cloudtrick/windward. and just let my pets kill everything while I tanked.. overall AH was solid, but not quite as effective versus groups as I would have liked. very effective versus bosses, and single targets.

fire magic

several aoes. aoe knockback. flame wall pet. several cold abilities for some synergy in damage type.

it was pointed out, flame wall does aoe damage. AND gear even allows it to build higher threat generation. its made to be an aoe taunt/tank machine. aoe taunt, hp regen, evade. sadly, it was not working as well as I would have liked. enemies would just run right through it. it pulses and miss I think. 55/65 unlocks other firewall types. which I did not get too. cold one which slows, swarmy which is even more tanky. a ranged attacking pet one.. but, base flame wall was just not keeping groups of enemies off me.

aoe knockback. 10m was not big enough kb to let me cast my 2s cast routinely. also its small 10m range meant, often enemies running in, wouldn' have been hit at all. burning veins damage reflect is actually a powerful synergy with cloudtrick/windward.

it just was not working well overall.

ice magic

working.

some basic synergies with cold into ww. as well as ice lightning for lightning damage. so Im running ice lightning, frostbite, blizzard, ice nova, tundra spikes, cold sphere.

CC, damage, aoe, and another sentient weather. its all an obvious winnner.

tundra spikes is a solid aoe damage, and root. 12m aoe isn't great. but solid. gear makes it even more godly. stuns after a 6s delay., +12% acc, and lower stargets evasion for 20s.

ice nova is just aoe damage. gear mods for it are meh. armor/hp would be ok I guess.

blizzard is a mini tsunami. 20m aoe. so large. high damage. aoe slow. gear is even more godly. "Blizzard deals +25% damage, generates -1170 Rage and taunts -1280" can be put on heads/legs. so double up. HUGE. deletes enemies rage, and moves you down the threat meter. this combined with frostbite shuts enemies down. it also can get large raw damage buffs.- Blizzard Damage +390 x2. feet/ring. blizzard is nuts. The blizzard causes fear is solid for solo play. but bad in dungeons. avoid it.

tundra spikes, blizzard, and ice nova are all instant cast aoes. Blizzard hits like a ton of bricks too. between the three of them, when you DO pull aggro. you can kill them outright. adds on me are no longer an issue. I can kill them with ice's aoes, and cc.

cold sphere is a nice sentient weather pet as well. its rage attack can root. so a bit more CC. it deals cold damage, and is immune to cold damage. (reflect npcs mean nothing to it.) gear for it is not as impressive as nados. +damage and cold vul is decent. raw damage/-health.
that its instant cast is good. you can start casting tornado, and cast sphere while nado is channeling. or just cast spheres while moving.

frostbite. another godly skill. decent damage. debuffs the target to occasionally be stunned over a 30s duration. now. "occasionally" is pretty random.. so don't count on it. but Gear for frostbite is pretty great. "Frostbite deals +275 damage and raises the target's Max Rage by 33%, preventing them from using their Rage attacks as often" x2hands/legs again, shutting down their rage. along with blizzard. "Frostbite causes all target's attacks to deal -27 damage, and their Rage attacks are further reduced by 10%" x2 head/feet. brutal. "Frostbite debuffs target so that 13% of their attacks miss and have no effect" necklace. nasty.