So I was finally able to play a decent amount, and I realized that elemental ward's elemental mitigation is only direct damage, so it doesn't protect you against burning damage. This makes it significantly less useful against enemies that apply DoTs. The wording makes it sound like it's all elemental damage, so that's why I assumed it blocked burning damage.

To be fair it is more balanced this way (Negating the DoTs is too strong), but it does make the ability a lot less useful and burning DoTs are quite nasty now with elemental ward not blocking them and burst evasion boots being nerfed so you can't avoid Droach DoTs as consistently.