In my opinion, Provoke's greatest strength comes from the ability to put the tank back at the top of the hate meter following a death. Raise the tank, tank provokes and we can carry on. It also allows the off tank to get to the top of the hate meter if the main tank dies.

As for pulling with Provoke, in the rare instance you need a longer range pull than Shield Lob, Provoke being on CD isn't that big of a deal as we have other enmity tools that are better at the beginning of a fight and we are probably talking about trash anyway. Shield Lob or Tomahawk would fill the role of getting hate back on a mob that changed targets and you don't feel like chasing it.

That being said, hate isn't completely handed to us in FFXIV as it is in other MMOs (I played multiple tanks in WoW, Rift, SWTOR). A decently geared DD certainly CAN pull from a tank, especially when they are attacking a mob that the tank isn't (even when rotating Flash in after each combo rotation).