The one thing I really want for Paladins

[Sarcatica]

Wrong. Take for example Divine Judgement in A12N and A12S and similar limit break attacks that appear throughout the game, you can not mitigate the damage from the attack with either Path or Reprisal due to being unable to hit Alexander Prime with either attack less than 20s before the attack goes off. On the other hand the Paladin can help mitigate each and everyone of those limitbreak attacks by proper use of Divine Veil's shields.

Except that LB3 tank is normally used, healers have ample of timing to heal back. DV doesn't do anything there at all, so basically just an illusion that it "helped" mitigate when you will still survive just fine without it, there is nothing to dps there as well so your healers shouldn't have issue at all. If you want to use situation where DV and Path/Delirium work best is things like Photon into double Whirlwind in A11S where shields and mitigation potentially play an important role to help top up (although ideally your healers should have enough tools to instaheal/mitigate for all members to full before 2x Whirlwind take effect) or A12S' Holy Bleed into Mega Holy where you take 18k~~ damage into 15k~ damage. The word mitigation is only ever important when you are potentially going to die without it, effective mitigation is not how you would perceive as mitigating damages that aren't consequential enough that you need it to clear.

You can't just bunch mitigation as overall damage mitigated because the stat alone is hollow and doesn't mean anything when you don't die, and that's not how tanking/healing works in the first place. It's like you are shielding a 10k aoe damage and you take 7k in the process when you have 22k HP, like that's inconsequential. If let's say you have 9k hp and the aoe dmg is 10k, then yes, the 3k shield works wonder for you. Effective mitigation isn't the same as passive mitigation, like Grit/ShO taking autos (you prolly mitigate 1k~ which regen will overheal anyway) VS Grit/ShO taking 40k tank busters (taking 20% less damage has more impact here).

Actually they are the exactly the players you need to check with to find out why they are not using (i.e. underutilizing) an ability because there is a cognitive gap somewhere.

High end players will show designers how abilities are best used for max output while average players will show average use for average effect and give them a better idea of how abilities are being used/not used. The average player is why many of the 4.0 changes are happening not the world first hardcore endgame raider.

You don't understand content balance at all.

What happens when you tune content so that skills like Path, Reprisal, and DV are no longer under utilized? You get the hardest Savage fights. When the eHP checks are so tight that the use of those skill is mandatory, all the players who can't perform at that level will get road blocked.

Content in general should not be designed for that level. By making it so that extreme degrees of coordinated raid-mitigation are not needed outside of early-prog in the hardest content, SE is catering to more average players. If you forget to apply path or DV, it doesn't mean that half your party will be dead as a result.

Early progression in week 1-3 was harder, if you do see the early kill videos where mitigations were used effectively. Now with more HP overall from gear, people clearing with less "optimal" mitigation is getting more common and is expected. IMO these tools help the poor healers more, while still maintaining the importance of mitigation where damages are fatal. The likes of Path/DV/Delirium will be pretty trivial in i270, it's already somewhat trivial for i260++ players with A12S on farm.