[HELP] What is the best elemental damage?

Hey guys, first of all, thanks for giving me some of your time reading this!

I'm fairly new to Path of Exile, i play, check builds, read topics, and i do learn stuffs by myself.

But im kinda lost with elemental damages.. I end up having the feeling that every Physical damage skill end up being linked to lightning damages, and often even fire spells or cold spells end up mixed with Lightning damages, etc.. And i end up wondering if lightning is better than the other two elemental types.

I do know that Cold chills on hit and Freezes on crits, Fire does Burn on crit, and Lightning does Shock on crit, but i'm wondering.

Why does lightning seem to be more popular/used than Cold or Fire damages?
It feels like almost every build end up converting some of their damages to lightning, and it makes me wonder if fire and cold are obsolete or less powerful.

Maybe lightning is more viable late game, is that it?..
I'm wondering all these things about the different elemental damages and i would like to learn more about it guys.

I play having the goal of being able to do my own builds one day, and i cant figure out what to do with elemental damages not knowing some more about it.

Please help me understand what are the strenghts/weaknesses of each elements, what could make an element better than an other, so i can improve and make better choices in the future concerning my builds!

Thank you all for your time and answers, hope to see you in game!

Lightning is ths most popular as it gives you more damagr when you shock things, and people care more about that than anything else (clearspeed 1 shot meta)

I'm playing frost blades this league and I'm in love with cold damage. Everything shattering left and right, so satisfying. Plus if not dead it's frozen, amazing survivability boost. Previous league played howa it's lightning and the feels were meh.

There is no best imo. All are viable, depends on skill gem (and patch/nerfs :).

Examples: lightning gem Arc is good to use with Call of the Brotherhood: convert lightning to cold and to have higher cold damage - its better for survival as cold can freeze enemies and shock grants bonus to damage if spell crits. Fire on crit ignites and there are (was?) pretty nice builds convert to chaos. Some fire gems with proper item make so big damage that Shaper is delete during 2 or 3 seconds..

I dont understand how you got to this conclusion. Almost every physical build is running Hatred, herald of ash or added fire support. Very few peole use the physical to lightning support gem or using other types of lightning conversion skills. I would dare to say lightning damage is the least used element out of the 3. That doesnt say anything about its viability, it's just easier to get cold and fire damages in your build.

So lets say that, for example, i checked few Spectral Throw builds and they were all using lightning damages, if i want to make a Spectral Throw build using Cold damage or Fire damage it'll be viable? Why are most people doing a Spectral Throw Lightning damage build then? Because of HoWa?

Correct me if i'm wrong, but i think people use physical to lightning just to convert the rest of their physical damage to any elemental damage if they got elemental nodes. I think there's no direct conversion support from phys to something other than lightning without special items.

For example there was a Ice Shot build that used barrage for single target. Since he only has elemental nodes and barrage does not convert your damage like Ice shot, he converts his physical to lightning to take advantage of elemental nodes.

From
https://pathofexile.gamepedia.com/Damage_conversion

"Damage conversion only flows in one direction between types, possibly skipping types, but never going in reverse:[4]

Physical → Lightning → Cold → Fire → Chaos"

https://pathofexile.gamepedia.com/Physical_to_Lightning_Support