Bulwark

[Jpec07]

This is legit because of how the combat table works. Block will only work on non-critical physical damage. It's useful exactly for what you have described, where you are facing off against a large swath of enemies - the more enemies are attacking you, the more normalized the mitigation shall become.

But you always want to pair Bulwark with Awareness. More than any other PLD cooldown, Bulwark is made significantly more effective by Awareness. A physical attack that cannot critically hit is one that is also that much more likely to block an attack. On its own, Bulwark mitigates 7-15% of damage, depending on your shield type (Tower/Scutum > Kite > Buckler). Pair it with Awareness, and the two will provide more mitigation than Rampart (to where, on big pulls, it's actually the first CD pair I hit after Hallowed Ground and Sentinel).