small pumpkin man
Explorer
You don't have to push people with thunderwave(or any other power) if you don't want to, or you can push them, but less than the maximum amount if you want.Otterscrubber said:Well, thunderweave has its drawbacks in that once your melee fighters engage opponents you may not want them to be pushed as it will mess up flanking and whatnot. We've only used it once in an adventure after our wizard leveled up and decided to take it, and when he used it he messed up a lot of positioning and made the fight a lot tougher for us actually. Monsters I've noticed seem to have all sorts of cool shifting abilities. But like I said that was just one instance, can't claim to have used it enough to be sure of its usefulness.
The only response to "thunderwave is better than Dire Wolverine" I have is that area effects are a controllers "schtik", so the Ranger is giving up damage to get some controller abilities.
That and Dire Wolverine Strike just isn't very good. The only time it does more damage than Two Fanged Strike is when you're surrounded by three or more creatures, and unless they're minions, Evasive Strike is probably better in that situation anyway. (and if they ARE minions, I'd most often not want to waste my encounter power on them because twin strike and an at will blast from an actual controller works better anyway)