Jobs that suck in groups excel solo/lowman. Legion seemed to give solo/lowman jobs a niche at the least by making aggro/link ranges so ridiculous. If you want to roll PUP, advertise yourself as being the guy to hold the off-NMs while the big, bad Warriors beat the crap out of the /assist.
Honestly not a bad idea (a VE automaton in recent updates is actually fairly durable, and SS is much more effective than it used to be) and I can see it happening, but it would be pretty tough without a sack and satchel full of dawn mulsums- You have to keep them in one place, the area is too big to move monsters around- To keep AoEs from hitting everyone, we had to put each mob in a corner. On our test run I used summoner, but blood pact timers ruin the job when you are under a time pressure (though pets stood up moderately well to the mobs)

Considering I don't usually regard you as one to think outside the box, props to you for doing so