Well. I was reading the book trying to come up with another argument for Fanatic-Templar, and I just realised something. I think I totally messed everything up here.

My original idea was based on two fronts.

1. Rand was right that the people that Graendal had compulsed were so braindead that for all intents and purposes they were not alive at all and the only one truly alive there was Graendal. The rest were zombies. I think that this still has merit.

2. LTT/Rand was still sane enough at the point the balefiring happened that he would have been carefull to use a minimum amount of force. If there was a chance to destroy the pattern, he would not have done it. And also that having LTT memories would mean that he would know exactly how much damage the pattern could take, better than anyone. So essentially no balefire atrocity.

However, upon re-reading the book, I just realised that the balefire incident happened a lot later in the books than I thought it did. I thought it happened relatively early, before Rand started agreeing with LTT that death was preferable. It did not. It happened very near the end.

This causes the floor to drop entirely from my argument. There is no reason to assume that the totally suicidal Rand that he already is at this point would be especially carefull with Balefire. He is more Moridin than TwoRivers!Rand already.

So I admit, I was probably wrong about the whole balefire thing and that those who argued with me about that are right and that it was indeed a crazy atrocity.

Damnit.