Looking at the abilities Elementalists have at their disposal to gain/maintain a little gap between themselves and that warrior that wants to unload the Hundred Blades on them (just one example of a situation where, even as dual Daggers, you won’t always want to be right next to someone).
I realize that dodge rolling is the main mechanic for the last ditch save-your-kitten scramble, but you won’t always have the endurance to dodge whenever you would like to, so a little help from weapon skills might be nice.
Here’s the list for Elementalists. Info taken from the Guild Wars 2 Skills Build Editor, last updated 9/9 (so it should be fairly up-to-date).
Frozen Ground (Staff): 2 second Chill. 40 second cooldown.
Unsteady Ground (Staff): 2 second Cripple. 30 second cooldown.
Shockwave (Staff): 2 second immobilize. 30 second cooldown.
Freezing Gust (Focus): 3 second chill. 25 second cooldown.
Gale (Focus): 2 second Knockdown. 50 second cooldown.
Frozen Burst (Main Hand Dagger): 3 second chill. 15 second cooldown.
Frost Aura (Off Hand Dagger): 2 second chill to anyone that hits you. Armor duration is 7 seconds. 40 second cooldown.
Earthquake (Off Hand Dagger): 2 second knockdown. 45 second cooldown.
As you can see, there are quite a number of them (I didn’t include Churning Earth, as the goal there is to get them to STAY next to you). However, the durations are all very short and the cooldowns range from moderate for Frozen Burst (15 seconds) to really kitten long for pretty much everything else (what’s up with the cooldowns on the Ele skills?).
Since the character I’ve spent the most time on since release is a Thief (mine is level 77), I’ll compare what Elementalists (mine is level 45) get to what Thiefs have at their disposal…
Disabling Shot (Shortbow): 2 second Cripple. 4 initiative cost.
Surprise Shot (Shortbow, but only from Stealth): 2 second Immobilize. 0 initiative cost.
Dancing Dagger (Off Hand Dagger): 5 second Cripple that can hit up to 4 targets. 4 initiative cost.
Initiative regens at a rate of 1 per second, with lots of ways to amp that up via Traits.
I know there are already a lot of posts about how Elementalists don’t do things as well as other classes. And though I find both positioning, damage dealing, and evade/escape options to be better on my Thief, I’m still enjoying my Elementalist.
But what the kitten? I’m the one with the paper-mache armor and the Thief, who imho has more ways to generate extra endurance for extra dodges, and better armor, gets the superior kiting abilities as well?
Now I don’t design games for a living, so perhaps I just haven’t seen the light yet. But at present I can’t say that makes sense to me.
Papa