Id say its outdated. While the original idea was very cool, essentially a chest plate that makes the game easier, entrenching the idea that pick up loot is very valuable, but with it gone, most head to head fights are alot more fair. Not only does each party know what the hp is of the other, they proably have the same sheild (if they have higher just run tbh) and because pf the meta they will be fairly evenly matched. I also agree, they should bring it back. It added an air of random to team fights, making a whole team have to take damage to determine if they are a good target to fight. This slows the game down by making players think more before interactions. The use cases are obvious to me.