Phys vs Ele damage

Thinking of making a new char, using currently a LA ranger lvl 82, and I want to know what's the best approach to doing as much damage as possible without sacrificing a lot of health nodes in the process. Would I be better off building physical, or elemental damage?
Are there any specific pros/cons for either of them.

Bump.

Its to complex to give u a simple answer and this topic is discussed all over the place.

I will try anyway:

Ele DMG pros:

- scales well with all forms of atk speed
- 2 common used curses available to greatly improve damage
- several usefully effects on elemental crits
- lots of build options
- a single 66% "more" ele weapon damage gem exists
- Added elemental damage from items is scaled with eleDMG nodes
- elemental reflect can be mitigate by high resists
- critical dmg multiplier stat, works well with fire crits

Ele Cons:

- lots of fire resist mobs
- item prices for good ele items are high doe to high demand
- only a few ele weapon damage nodes available


Phy DMG pros:

- mana/life leech available via items and nodes -> frees a potentiality leech gem slot
- cheap physical items available
- hatred + add fire damage "add" damage based on phy damage, scales very well
- lost of phy damage nodes
- some phy damage skills have high skill effectiveness 100-150%
- phy damage can be converted via uniques


Phy DMG cons:

- Armour mechanic favors slow massive damage hits over faster low dmg hits
- the only phy curse, will often be overridden in groups
- only a 47% "more" gem (compared to 66% eleWdamage)
- added phy damage from items is NOT scaled with phy damage nodes or str/melee damage
- physical reflect might be hard to mitigate (reaching 80% armour compared to reach 80% ele resist)
- no physical dmg crit effect

ele - king. phys - that little annoying shit u always wanna kick and hear it cry. thx GGG.

I've tried both several times for ranged as well as melee, and what I can say for sure without being ambiguous is that with ele it's harder to make the gear work. I tried an elemental build as my first end-game attempt, and since I had basically zero currency I brickwalled on low level maps, simply because I lacked HP and ele damage on gear. With a top-notch weapon and excellent jewelry with both flat ele damage and alot of HP I'm sure elemental builds have a big edge, but getting to that point requires huge investments.