I'm personally loving my Guardian post-5.0.4 now that I've adjusted to the new active mitigation system, but I can easily sympathize with a particular complaint about the new Savage Defense skill.
Due to the RNG nature of dodge, when facing a single target, the actual benefit of the additional avoidance is uncertain and just plain less satisfying than the immediate and obvious big green number provided by Frenzied Regeneration. That's not to say it's a bad ability -- its proper use is critical to our survival unless we greatly outgear content -- but the benefit is simply too "behind the scenes" to make proper use feel gratifying (and indeed, in RARE cases it may do absolutely nothing if you fail to dodge the ~3-4 incoming hits from a boss over its duration, or if you would have dodged the same hits without it, you lucky bear you).
So all of the obvious stated, I'd like simply to propose a minor boost to the skill mainly intended to add back in that mental gratification for pushing a button and seeing something obvious happen as a result (okay folks, here comes the TL;DR portion):
What if having Savage Defense active caused you to gain a minor heal or perhaps a short-duration, stacking damage buff whenever you successfully dodge? Nothing too significant, but just enough to change SD from the uncertain, RNG-reliant effect that it is into something with a psychological reward for its use. Whatever the actual effect of the proc, it would need a very small (1s?) cooldown to avoid making AoE trash tanking ridiculous.
What do you all think? Looking for feedback on my harebrained idea before I post on the official forums.