And lastly, if the add is between me and the tank, it knocks it back to the tank. And yes, the tanks I run with are generally quick enough on the uptake to grab it back.

If someone is knocking back, blame the player, not the tool

The shaman’s excuse? “I was OOM”. Oh yeah, cuz your mana is more important than my damn crowd control. Nice to know you appreciate your tank.

Knockbacks are also hugely popular in City of Heroes where a few power sets are pretty heavy with it. (Bowling for Hellions as someone mentioned to me once.) In this aspect has a similar problem as with WoW when mob targets are bounced away from the tank. Again…this should be used sparingly when a mob is attacking you or another squishy. Also knocking back targets into the wall where they don’t go far is also reccomended.

Let’s face it, it’s not like bubble defenders could heal!

Spinks, it amazes me that the rest of your group did not yell at the Shaman for causing the wipe. It’s not like you aggro’d the boss or the next group. If I saw a mob go flying away, I would have voted to remove the Shaman right away.

Its the biggest pain in the arse when tanking, at best the mobs are scattered and you have to round them up again, and at worst they are scattered and decide to bring friends with them when they return. Neither is good for the tanks blood pressure.

When I’m dps, its not as stressful, but it can still be frustrating when you’ve just popped bladestorm or sweeping strikes only to have all the nicely grouped mobs get tossed around so you can only get one of them and thus waste the spell. Makes me wish I could target the caster of the knock-back instead of the mobs.

The second Run when it happened again I asked what had happened and the Shaman, to his credit, admitted that it had been him & his Thunderstorm spell. “It does awesome damage!” he said, but at least he too was smart enough to realize that its application within an Instance was greatly limited.

Spells like these really need to come with little italicized sub-text warnings, something along the lines of: “Frequent use in confined spaces can cause high Threat and may Aggro the Tank. Use with caution.”

I agree 100% that this glyph makes thunderstorm tank-friendly, and group-friendly. But PvE-ifies? No.

You’re maybe forgetting that for 79 out of the 80 levels we travel, our PvE experience is mainly alone. Instances aren’t much of the PvE experience for most of the tuime you spend levelling. For that reason, the default behaviour of Thunderstorm is very useful for its caster, who is usually tank, DPS and healer all rolled into one. That’s how everybody experienced levelling. We had to rely on our own abililties only.

I agree 100% that once you’re in a group, you should either equip yourself with the appropriate glyph or just not use the spell; but don’t knock the designers for making a phenomenally useful spell for shamans, that happens to make no sense to use on the few occasions where you as a tank would ever come across it. Remember, most of the time when this is cast, the shaman is in a PvE situation and is alone.

So, agreed it isn’t a group-friendly or tank-friendly spell. But that doesn’t mean it isn’t a useful spell for PvE.

For the minority of occasions when the shaman wants to use this spell and is in a group, there’s a glyph. That’s the right way round. Mostly, the knockback is wanted, because mostly the shaman is not in a group.

Disclaimer: I’m not a shaman, so I can’t use it (or any other knockback spell, such as druids’ typhoon).