So now we're back to Gallant's Roll being useless.
Honestly the Phalanx route was probably the best option, albeit still not very useful. Low amounts of PDT would have had a pretty similar impact (which is to say, almost none); even "non-tank" jobs can generally cap PDT these days so the complaint there seems ah... late? Ignorant of existing defensive options and the various benefits thereof? Something wrong, at least. Whoring defense isn't really conducive to maintaining hate, so it's more a strategy for managing various lesser NMs in a straight-tanking solo or lowman situation, or if you're holding something without any real chance of hate shifting. Even then it's best combined with other, superior stats given the very mediocre impact player defense has. Point being, you usually don't see CORs in such situations and this isn't going to change that.
The gains from COR's offensive buffs are overwhelming in comparison to its defensive options, which is more a testament to how broken the damage system is in FFXI than anything else. Given the equally broken status of enmity mechanics, it's unrealistic to expect a shift away from a heavily offensive focus in COR buff priorities unless it receives some seriously powerful defensive buffs.