Quote Originally Posted by NoctisCaelus View Post
I guess I'm a noob. It's a long range pull. Sometimes you need to, sometimes you don't and shield lob would do. But certain situations might call for it.
The problem is that you waste a very valuable skill, put on cooldown for 40 sec, for absolutely no advantage: provoke does no aggro. You'll still have to lob, flash or throw a few damage abilities in order to hold aggro beyond your DD's first skill or your healer's first heal.

Provoke puts you on top of the aggro list, but that's all it does: immediately after, you're bound to go down this list if you don't do anything else. Which means that it's invaluable if your objective is to get back a mob to you: provoke then lob does wonders to do that. Typically, after pulling with lob then flashing the whole pack, if some DDs go crazy on AoE, or your healer needs to put some heavy curing out there, chances are a mob will go to them: that's when provoke is your best friend, followed by something else to keep you on top of the aggro list for some time.

Keeping Provoke as a "panic button" is probably the best way to use it when regular means don't work, or the mob is too far away from you and for some reason you wish to stay where you are and force the mob to come back.