[Karinya]

Pebbles. Everyone gets them, there's even a belt that dispenses them for all jobs.

Moar excuses please.

Neither the pebbles nor the belt is all jobs. Most jobs, though. Pebbles also have shorter range than real ranged weapons, IIRC, but I suppose you can work around that.

The belt will dispense one stack of 12 pebbles every Earth hour. Have fun pulling with that.

Unless you're going to bring half a dozen pellet belts (and most players have never even seen one), MNK is not a practical puller and DRG is worse. Comparing the pellet belt to RNG, COR, BRD or THF's pulling abilities proves my point, not yours.

Then why do you expect CORs and BRDs to pull? Because we can stage-pull.

Wrong. I expect CORs to pull because they have guns (that you don't have to argue with them to convince them to bring) and they continue to contribute to a fight after they physically leave it (while their buffs are still in effect on other players). BRDs have 0-mp ranged magic and, again, stay in the fight while walking away from it.

RNG, on the other hand, do have to leave the fight when they leave the fight. So in that respect I'd agree that they're less than ideal for continuous pulling. But they still have a headstart on every mob, stealth abilities to avoid unwanted adds on the way to and from the mob, and shadowbind if something goes really wrong - in addition to whatever their subjob is.

And since they're a traditional pulling job, they're much more likely to have pulling experience - remember, this thread is from the perspective of the leader of a pickup party. If you don't personally know any of the other party members, which one do you think is more likely to have the skills to pull successfully? The RNG or the MNK? Which one already has a ranged weapon and ammo in their inventory?

In fact, in slaughters BRD's job role by taking the focus off of thier specialization and puts it all into pulling.

BRD pulling certainly does have downsides, but if it's the type of party and camp that benefits from continuous pulling (which not all of them are, but in that case there's no reason for a 0-MP DD not to pull), having the BRD pull may be the least-bad option, compared to having a DD sacrifice damage by leaving camp. Very few jobs can continue to contribute to a fight for a minute or more after physically leaving it; BRD and COR head that list.

Do you invite many THFs to pull in merit? To pull in EXP PTs? Let them SATA? Invite them at all? Other's jobs damage do catch up. THF just gets great spike damage early on, but other jobs admittedly catch up and without a willing SATA parter, THF and /THF cannot shine.

About as many as other jobs. They're somewhat disadvantaged by hate-bouncing parties, of course, but that mostly happens after 60 and Assassin can make up for it. An above-average pulling capability (compared to an equally skilled player playing a different job) doesn't hurt, certainly.

I do try not to discriminate against jobs because they're not the flavor of the month. A few jobs have serious balance problems (IMO SCH and possibly PUP atm, and both are being adjusted in 2 days) and it's arguable that THF is one of them; I think they usually do more damage than people think they're doing. It's notorious that people underrate low delay and H2H weapons if they're not actually doing the math, or having a computer do it for them.

You're not making much sense lately. I said THF has the ability to shed hate and leave to pull.

Which is false; THF can avoid accumulating hate, but once they have it they're stuck with it. Unless you're a job that really can *shed* hate - DRG and BST is pretty much it atm - you're responsible for not drawing too much in the first place. That applies just as much to RNG (especially RNG/WAR) as it does to last resort + souleater + berserk DRKs or chain-nuking BLMs.

In any case, a THF that leaves can't DE when they're not there any more than a RNG that leaves can SW when they're not there. Both suffer somewhat in damage and missed TP opportunity. They're still both usually better choices than anything else in the party.

If I pop off a Slugwinder on RNG or COR, I can't just walk away from that and pull. >.>;

You can if you were careful of enmity before you shot.

One of the worst developments of the TAU era, IMO, is that DDs don't take responsibility for their own enmity anymore. Not that there weren't some idiots before, but it's much more widespread the last couple years to see someone who would literally rather die than do 1% less damage than their maximum possible - even though becoming an MP sponge, let alone dying, slows down party exp far worse than moderating their damage to keep enmity on someone who can handle it.

Of course, it's convenient to be able to save it for a finishing shot and not have to worry about hate; but it's a sacrifice you sometimes have to make for the overall good of the party. The purpose of the party is not to beat the other DDs. (That would be meaningless anyway in a game with things like acid bolts, Warcry and Shield Break.)

I seem to remember you feeding me the argument that WARs shouldn't pull because they'd have to give up Bomb Core to use a ranged weapon.

That wasn't me, and I disagree with whoever it was.

Someone posted that many WARs will, in fact, *have* a bomb core (or something like it) rather than a ranged weapon, and you'd better tell them to switch *before* leaving town, which I agree with; if you have to specifically tell your RNG to bring a ranged weapon, then you shouldn't be inviting them for any purpose whatsoever. But either job should be prepared to pull when asked to. RNG, COR and THF should expect that they will be pulling in most of their parties, so many that the leader may think it's redundant to tell them each time, just like it would be redundant to tell a WHM, PLD, NIN, DRK or MNK what their role is going to be. At high levels BRD falls into this category too.

Look at the jobs I listed 14 jobs that succeed at pulling, well over half of the jobs in the game. I could arguably throw in RDM as the 15th, as they can also equip ranged and if they're a good RDM, should might have to give up a tathlum or hedgehog bomb to do it, but they do get bows too. Even BST does and they have no skill in archery.

3/4ths of the jobs in the game can pull with ranged or magic, and if I want to get technical, MNK and DRG can use pebbles, bringing us to 17 jobs. Your argument fails everwhere but SCH, BLM and WHM.

All of which can pull with magic, anyway, except maybe in places like Ro'Maeve or Ru'Avitau which hardly anyone camps in anymore. Actually, WHM and BLM can use pebbles too (although, oddly, not SCH - unless wiki's info is just outdated, which is possible since it doesn't list DNC either).

In any case, I never argued that *only* a few jobs could pull, just that they're *usually better*. WHM can pull. With Repose they can even stage-pull. They have Blink and Stoneskin to protect themselves while they do it, too. All of which does not add up to making it a good idea in any but the most bizarre party setups and camps. The existence of a possible pulling method for a given non-traditional-pulling job does not mean that they are going to be on par with an equally skilled player (or the same player) playing RNG, THF, COR, BRD, or non-tanking NIN, because job does matter.