I agree skills need balance and tradeoffs; however, I am trying to demonstrate the tradeoff is already there with the limitations that exist. The one-shot, high cooldown, reagent consuming, etc. limitations.
As it is right now, the damage matches the pre-patch damage values; however, the Defense bonus effect is essentially not a factor post-patch, and that’s what a lot of people expect from Aspersion. You are using Aspersion as a damage dealer, and see the defense as a “nice to have”. I believe that most people see Aspersion as a defensive skill, with damage as a “nice to have”. (I could be wrong - others will chime in if I’m way off base.)
Multiple effects is not bad for skills. Many skills have dual-use and multiple skill synergies. Heal, for instance, does good damage AND gives HP. Conviction enhances Smite. Blessing enhances Heal damage. All class trees have skill synergies of different sorts.
My other point is that the new damage calculations mean defense has diminishing returns. If you get +100 additional defense, you don’t take 100 less damage. Similarly, if you get +200 additional defense, the percentage drop in damage doesn’t scale to match.
There is no “OP” in making a better scaled defensive boost to Aspersion. It’s already a very limited combat skill, and its defense boost is noise on the same level as Pardoner Increase Magic Defense. I’m not saying that we should make the defense bonus ridiculous, but the defense bonus of both Increase Magic Defense and Aspersion does not seem to scale properly with the new atk/def damage formulas. Others have chimed in that the problem is with the scaling of the defense boost, not the fact that they want Barrier-levels of defense boost.