Not all skills are, or need to be, relevant for all content. In the case of blind, both Flash and Dark Passenger are clearly most relevant in AOE situations where blind is a much more beneficial status because against several enemies where the statistics become more relevant.
Even if you fashion it to work against bosses as you've said, it's just unreliable mitigation for only the least-threatening attacks. You'd still better served spending the GCD (flash) or huge mana draw (DA+DP) on something else.

Then for shield swipe: It's a good skill even if pacification didn't exist at all. It adds DPS most of the time and saves TP.