Forgive me to pull up the discussion again, I think it is still somewhat relevant.

In my opinion, three things could / should be done without straight up axing Block as a mechanic.

1.) Passage of Arms needs a rework.
I'm aware this will earn me the most ire, but hear me out. Passage of Arms is a cool skill and I think having an additional group mitigation (in intention at least) would work - if you could continue attacking while it is deployed.

That's right, I'm suggesting to make it work like [Temperance], but with a smaller radius (10-12y around the PLD).
  • * Crystalline wings are deployed (and maybe a somewhat visible circle to signify the range) on the Paladin
  • + is no longer cancelled from doing other actions
  • + self-mitigation effect unified to be -15% (optional with change 2b)
  • - reduce duration to 6-10s at most, keeping Dark Missionary / Heart of Light more relevant as the long-term mitigation
On paper this would not change how much personal mitigation PLD has, but it would make Passage of Arms a lot more attractive to use.

2a) Block passive/Guaranteed Block adjustments.
For similar reasons why Guaranteed Critical Hits / Direct Hits have gotten the bonus damage from having excess Critical Hit / Direct Hit stats or raid buffs (something they seemingly forgot for cap speed weaponskills / spells like Heatblast)...

I believe it would be nice if your passive wouldn't deactivate when using Passage of Arms and (Holy) Sheltron and instead would merge into essentially a "Superblock". Say you get a block proc by the system while you had a guaranteed Block deployed, you'd get a superblock which would be... 30%? 35%? Definitely a significant amount of mitigation to make up for not having the heal / shield passive the other three tanks bring with their combos (Storm's Path + Souleater heal, Brutal Shell Heal/Shield). I'm unsure about Parry so I'd just leave it there.

Also please let us block critical hits again. Doing Ultima / Bahamut on Paladin and timing an already 4-seconds duration Sheltron perfectly only to be greeted by two(!!) critical hits in a row is a real gut punch without the Awareness effect.

2b.) Alternative: Change Guaranteed Block to standard mitigation
Boring change but I guess it would "work". It would also help alleviate Paladin's inability to block DOT damage, but I can't speak on how important this truly is especially in conjunction with Change #1 regarding PLD's mitigation budget.