Let's make Paladins not suck like a donkey's rectum!

But then the paladin dies and so everyone dies.

?_?

Make it so the paladin reduce a % of that absorbed damage and you get something going in there. Instead of 25k Redirected to the paladin he nullify like 25-50% of that damage. That way the palladin doesnt die due to his own skill.

You guys misunderstood my point. Going to clarify what I meant:

The gist of the skill: A party skill that absorbs up to 50% of all damage from party members. 5%~10% (your pick) of that damage will get applied to the Paladin, while the rest of the damage is ignored.

1. Empress hits everyone in the party for 10k

2a. SuperSpecialPaladinTankSkill absorbs 50% of the damage from every party member, up to 5.
2b. Party members only take 5k damage each
2c. 50% of 10k = 5k. 5k x 5 = 25k TOTAL damage gets redirected to the Paladin

3. Paladin takes only 5%-10% of THAT total damage = 1,250-2,500 additional damage is taken by the Paladin

4. Paladin ALSO takes whatever damage Empress deals, which in this case is ~10k (before all damage reduction skills apply)

5. TOTAL DAMAGE: 10k + 1,250~2,500 = 11,250~12,500 damage to the Paladin, assuming the Paladin gets hit by the Empress at all. In most cases, all of the Paladin's passive blocking abilities should nullify the 10k from the Empress a trollsomely high amount of times. In most cases, the Paladin would take only the measly 1,250-2,500 damage, assuming all 5 party members get hit at once. Unless your whole party is made of warriors, only ~2-3 should be getting hit on average. A mere drop in the bucket of the Paladin's high HP pool.

If it helps, the damage gets applied separately from Empress damage, meaning it'd allow more chances to proc blocking, or Auto-pot.