ToME: the Tales of Maj'Eyal

So I thought I was doing alright with my current Doomed. Keeping out of the way, and letting my shadows do most of the murdering. Anyway, then a bunch of devs popped on to chat. Of note, one said this:

[2016-01-29 00:30:10] <Shibari #tome> yeah doing some quick testing on Gesture of Guarding atm, this is clearly ridiculous lol
[2016-01-29 00:30:20] <Shibari #tome> I've 356 with pretty mediocre stats

Now maybe I just have a different definition of mediocre, but with tier 4 mindstars my gesture blocks... 81. That's like 20% of "mediocre". Why is there such a huge discrepancy? Am I doing something horribly wrong? What am I missing that could multiply my power 5-fold?

At TL5 Gesture of Guarding seems to be about 300%ish of your best hand damage. What's your current damage? Looking at a random Doomed winner with a T5 artifact Mindstar they have 63 damage, so 315ish guarding. Shibari might have been understating his stats a little, 350 seems doable with T5 mindstars and excellent stats though. Potentially even more if psiblades stacks with them, not sure if they do.

e: Here's a better example: http://te4.org/characters/102886/tome/5 ... 1585609eef

361 damage with a T4 mindstar!

I didn't have psiblades yet. I was waiting to try and find an escort so I could get a free +0.10 bonus to them and then forgot to pick it up. With some point swapping I got up to 3/5, going from 31 damage to 75. Up to 219 now, which is a bit of an improvement (more than I was expecting anyway). Still, you're sinking 20% of your generic points into only blocking melee damage. My Deflection blocks much, much more (348 currently) for half as many points and works on more than just melee damage. With a T5 mindstar I gain 35 deflection (and lose 11% global speed, currently), up to 254. With a few more levels I might be able to break 300, but I would hardly consider that mediocre anymore. That'd be pushing "great", or even "excellent" with a good artifact.