ahhhhh Nachtmahr you missed something very important.
those of us whom did believe your stats - secretly banded together and promised to NEVER EVER publically talk about the benefits of Shot blocking.
thus whording the informaiton for ourselves, in a secret shot blocking cult like group.
mention of the topic was to be met with repurcusions so horrible i cannot mention them here.
in all seriousness - dont be offended - many people did believe you. or already had similar ideas which were simply reinforced statistically. so well done there.
i personally don't think SB and ID need to be EXACTLY the same. certainly a big difference causes problems like high fouling . But certainly i feel like having - even a 3 or 4 point difference, is acceptable. My guys currently have a 2 and 3 point difference between SB and ID (with SB being higher) and i don't really see this as a problem.
Further to the discussion in this thread which idon't think has been mentioned thus far, but i do remember being mentioned by Nachtmahr, is Rebounding.
Higher SB cost/capping can be offset by reducing the level of Rebounding that you have - I think the assumption that people make is that you need to keep all your other skills at the same level and then add more SB. But this is not true.
Introducing SB i feel means you can reduce the level of ID that you need - but also the level of RB. almost a direct swap out. 2 points of RB and 2 points of ID make 4 points of SB.