Quote Originally Posted by Shurrikhan View Post
[...]
"I mean, they pointed out when they added the trait that it was a stopgap measure until they could get the transferred damage to be mitigatable at both ends" - if this was truly the case and they actually had done that, I'd have been completely okay with it - but unless this has gone completely unnoticed for now 2.5 expansions since 5.0, this has not become the case. This I can perceive when I use things like HP shields (TBN) on myself and a Paladin covers me, it will fail to soak up the shield at all. It would also be incredibly weird to use given the presence of XYZ vulnerability up debuffs or debuffs granted from taking damage, depending on how the application of said debuff is coded.

Blocks were relevant for all OT-related buster things, which included but obviously wasn't limited to using Cover on your MT and absolutely dropping various single-busters down the bin with Cover + Sheltron + whatever you chose extra at the time. Technically if playing optimally (damage wise) you may have wanted to have the Paladin get enmity when possible anyhow for shield swipes every 15s and swap around to make use of Cover's mitigation as planned/desired. Short story - blocks were hella powerful.

As for "If you can't not be in it, damage can, well, assume that you'll be in it." - well this is sort of the thing, if you strictly speak for Stormblood and below, yes this is truly the case and it is a net positive. Shadowbringers onwards, the damage intake essentially is like you were in Sword Oath in Stormblood as a baseline, despite the trait - because that's how they balanced it, sorta. With Endwalker's mitigation adjustments and additions (Holy Sheltron + Re-addition of Bulwark, attack spell healing), this became less of an issue thankfully, but Shadowbringers felt dreadful at times because of this.