Why the kineticist is considered useless (at least in PUGs)

It's because they think the enemy is using ghetto lag hax to get to you and they are only trying to protect you their score.

well conversely... it is a bit annoying when i'm trying to melee something to activate rage, and all of the sudden it's yanked to the other side of the map.

I watched that kineticist guide, and that bit about not wanting your teammates to kill your pulls made me go .... er ...

So here are two issues:

(1) It is not only the kineticist that uses the hostiles to stay alive, and
(2) sometimes you hit things that are in front of you

Now, I do try to avoid attacking pulls, but sometimes I hit them anyways. And other people in the group may have their own target priorities...

You seem to be suggesting that it's a bit silly for me to be worrying about whether someone kills my pulls, given the scoring system. My point was more to do with the fact that the kineticist, like some other classes, needs kills to perform best, rather than scoring, and given that the two mobs I'm holding are already dead, it seems like a waste of time and resources for someone else to kill them. And also, as a kineticist, I can put those two mobs to good use on killing something else. Or would I be stealing your potential skills then ;-)

Hmm, when you put it that way... more reason to kill pulled targets!

But jokes aside, that's why I don't like Kineticist, just one of the problems - it's such a fragile kit, someone killed your pull? Sadface. Your shields dropped? Sadface. Armored targets? Sadface.

Pull is for Jugger scrubs.

You haven't played ME3MP?

I really can't see how anyone will use the kineticist without incendiary or disruptor ammo and a fast firing weapon. 

I would kill for an acolyte though. Destroy anointed shields then pull and toss....

I tried her last night in a few bronze pugs.. for the most part nobody shot my pulled targets, but around level 7 I went into a silver game and this Asari Adept and Vanguard were having a score whoring war, so instead of just letting me pick up a red mook and pull->throwing it into her annihilation field to score her and me even more points she would legit focus whatever I pulled and never let me combo with her. I don't think I got to ascend until wave 3. There was a Turian Soldier with a Vanquisher sniping the mooks I pull->throw off the map on Sandstorm(that's the one with the two roofs right?) too which was kind of annoying for getting my ascension. I'm level 11 with her now and she is really fun, but sometimes people out of ignorance kind of make it hard to play her. Tossing canisters into big groups for a detonation followed by a lance detonation is pretty to watch, and I can't wait until rank 4 Pull where I can toss two people.


Also since I've been pouring all my credits into 100k packs to unlock her my consumables are pretty low, but she is considerably better with an ammo power too bad I don't have the stockpile to waste ammo powers on silver games .

should remove pull and give it flare

We had the Geth Juggernaut (a small prime) that did a force choke melee atack. It wasn't very effective as melee, but it replenished shields and you'd see players do that exclusively and some complained about the enemies they held were sniped by teammates, which could suck when you need the shields but overall the total melee approach wasn't really effective. It was a nice thing for sniper scrubs, though.