I Dont know what is going on with shield skills

I decided to make a shield based merc, and I am currently slogging through act 2 in my mid 20s.

Jesus christ a single yellow mob is like fighting cruel doryani. Minutes, minutes of just zdps. While taking magnitudes MORE damage then a sorc. In melee range no less, trying to juggle active block to keep from self stunning myself.

If the intent of shields was to cause insanity then the skills are PERFECT change nothing.

Where is molten shell, where is our DEFENSE. I took glancing blows and started dying 3x as fast. Quickest I ever hit up hooded one in my life.

Spells chunk me, melee chunks me, aoes chunk me, did I mention I do like 15 dps in act 2?

Its uhh, not good.

Uh ya see well um yeah there is uh just uh one ya see uh small um little thing...

For some freaking reason you can't block AoE damage of any kind. Block is piss. It's just worse evasion that stops you from using a higher damage weapon.

The weird artificial divisions between the different types of damage that the different defences work against (or not), that ES gets to completely ignore, is kind of frustrating. In addition to the opaque weirdness, armour, block, and shield skills are all kind of awful right now.

Playing ES just to largely ignore the idiotic Dodge Roll mechanic is the best quality of life thing you can do in this game right now.

I just spent close to 15 minutes chipping away 40 health at a time against collosus only to INSTANTLY die the second the adds appeared and exploded me from full to dead instantly. Shield skills in poe 2 are quite possibly the worst most unrewarding, no damage, no payoff, 100% downside garbage I have ever seen in any game. Absolute trash.

I have put almost every point I have so fsr into buffing my shield, and 90% of my dps comes from contagion. A spell I have invested absolutely nothing into.

I am honestly astonished by how bad this is, lol.