Yeah it's definitely always been this way.
If you spam any DoT/HoT that doesn't tick as it's applied you will never see it tick since it's being re-applied before it gets a chance.
Say you have +500 absorb from a proc relic. That's like 8% tops. Your shield chance being around 42%.
If you manage to shield an attack that would hit you for 20k damage((20k damage first off being unlikely(and then only a 42% chance on top of that) It would only mitigate 1600 extra damage. Whereas with this relic you still have your shielding and absorbing and on top of that you have a guaranteed chance to absorb 1360 damage. It's also on a 20 second cooldown as either the tooltip or the proc itself it bugged.
It's supposed to hit that hard.
Being a vanguard and not having many cooldowns you'd want to use a relic+adrenal for sweeping slashes if you are below 30k hp/healers are stressed etc. Maybe your energy shield. You should have around a 40-42k health pool so taking that 26k damage shouldn't really be a problem.
Just build cheap **** around a GTX 770 :3
You can easily build a computer with a gtx 770 that can play pretty much anything for $700
You could try using an AMD card+cpu but they use more electricity which means you have to spend more on a PSU
If the 20 sec cd is a bug, it's pretty much an official announcement that the developers don't know ****. It's barely good at a 20 second cooldown, if it's a 40 second cooldown it's only 1/3rd as good as a serendipitous assault.