That's just the thing. Sleek rods are abs on a stick. So, if you don't want to give abs on a stick, the logical solution is to *gasp* not give abs on a stick. Instead they decided to make finding abs on a stick a pain in the ass, third time now. Game balance is up to discussion, whether mages are balanced with or without abs is up to discussion. The fact that 65%ish dam redux is available to a mage character once various hoops have been jumped is ridiculous. It's time to either decide that

a) abs is not balanced -> remove/tweak
b) abs is balanced -> quit fucking around with it

Personally when playing Chrichuk, I rarely used abs (yes, any of it), and I found out that a very very well geared scion voker is gross even without. Against RBWs solo I usually slapped on aura. Personally I think mages are fairly balanced even if barrier was removed altogether. But the fact that it remains available, but requires jumping through annoying hoops does nothing to make it more blanced, or fun.