It looks like you have found your own effective style Thearos.

To me lobbing is fine for social events.  It's fine for target practice sometimes...  It should probably even be fine for hunting with really heavy ammo, but it certainly lacks something. IMO, Jaegoors stones smash because of their momentum.  The heavier the stone, the less velocity you need to cause it to smash. A 50 pound boulder hitting a proportionately larger piece of steel would probably shatter if it hit at 15 mph. Yet it would be far less lethal than a lighter, faster stone.  Jaegoor's shots are certainly lethal, so it's a moot point.   

Anytime you take a weapon out of it's original context you begin to lose aspects of that weapon. Like power, in target shooting, and common sense for that matter, in modern fencing...   One place where lobbing makes things more difficult is hitting targets at longer unknown distances.  The greater your trajectory, the more problems you're likely to have.

Personally I'm always much more impressed with slingers who can get at least 80% of their maximum velocity in a really accurate shot. Otherwise your sacrificing one thing to get another. 

morphy - having seen jaegoor sling at first hand. He doesn't lob.
Throws pretty hard. Not as hard as luis, but definitely not  a lob.

Is it better to throw a less accurate stone that goes through an object and irreparably damages it?

or

Is it better to throw a more accurate stone that moves slowly and plops into the target with mixed results?

Some people say the latter is more fun and so it is the way to go. That's fine. Partly because I'm a history buff, I happen to agree with the other crowd that speed and damage are the way to go.

I'd much rather hit one home run then 10 base hits.. Plus in terms of outdoor survival with the sling (where it counts imo) most of the times you only have the one shot to kill an animal, so why choose a lob unless it's a rodent or something? Great a lob got you 62 rodent calories more frequently then this 200 lb buck I just took down after a few more tries throwing with purpose...A fast accurate shot is necessary for most military, fighting, hunting scenarios with the sling. Where does the lob fit in AT SHORT RANGE except as a modern man's border line lazy way of throwing imo.

The way I see it, it's a weapon, use it as such. For me it's still just as fun as lobbing which I'll admit can be a nice reprieve from forceful slinging from time to time, however only to a small extent.. Also if memory serves me, the stones people dug up in all those archaeological sites you guys post in the historical section of this forum are not large stones for lobbing. Rather the opposite right? Just wanted to point that out as well.

And historically the glandes etc were for distance.
Or fist sized stones.

Thanks for the replies!

From the photos/textual evidence that I've seen, the vast majority of ammo used for slinging historically was in the 50-250 gram range, suggesting a flat fast throw being used more often than the lob of a very large stone. To clarify in case there was some confusion, in my previous post I was not denying the historical existence of very large lobbing stones, but instead siding with the superiority of the fast shooting style as apposed to a slow lob when slinging in BOTH function and historical prevalence.

Furthermore, assuming the mathematically inclined forum members are correct, and the lob somehow creates more damage than a fast throw(which I imagine is marginal), let's keep in mind the giant size the rocks have to be for the lob to mathematically keep up with the damage inflicted by a fast but smaller projectile..

Also there is much more that goes into the effectiveness of a throwing style/ rock weight than just a physics equation..

For one, if you think about the practicality of hunting or fighting in combat with the lob it loses hard to throwing fast. The lob uses heavy rocks which means the slinger is bogged down with much more weight and less ammo to carry than a slinger that throws fast with smaller projectiles. You can't move as fast, reload as fast, chase quarry as fast etc because of this giant ammo that you want to plunk down on the target with a lob. The weight of the rock limits your range greatly as well.

However, despite the historical prevalence, combat superiority, and practicality of throwing FAST, for me it's also more fun 

Anyways (back from a slinging session, well a few shots). I'd say that every one has a range at which it makes sense to whang-- what I called point-blank range-- and every one has a range starting from which he has to lob because of drop of shot. In my case, I shoot straight on at ranges of 10-15m. I do not, incidentally, shoot very heavy-- I'd say 80g. If I shoot a "hand-filler", my point-blank range is extended, even though I find shooting heavier stones (say 200-250g ?) quite trying.

There is a range, say 25m, at which I could whang (but it tires me out and I find it difficult to get sweet-spot release) as well as lob-- and start to prefer to lob, with heavier ammo.

If I were shooting in war, my own feeling is that I'd be using  heavier stones (for effect), but would be shooting at a safe distance (say 60m), and hence would lob. It is likely that hi-velocity, aerodynamically optimized lead ammo extends point-blank range considerably (perhaps to 60-80m ?), as well as allow very long distances when lobbing.