It was designed in the instance of so many sources of damage stacking on top of each other. The bad thing about this is that we have no idea how much damage is lost in translation due to multiplication errors and additive sources, much like how Toughness Damage Reduction currently works.
However, I think +5% Damage stands well on its own as a functionally permanent increase in Damage, even if it’s not a lot on its own.
For instance, I demonstrated the several sources of stacking damage from Veteran that already exists for the whole party in this thread I made last night:
You can functionally upkeep +12% Damage from ‘Redirect Fire!’ permanently, as long as you’re continuously marking targets, because the stacks build up per kill. With the aura, you’re sitting pretty at +17% Damage.
With the perhaps unintended bug of being able to stack 5 and 8 stacks of ‘Redirect Fire!’ together, that’s +19.5% Damage from 2 Veterans, making it a whopping +24.5% Damage with the aura.
A lot of things on their own don’t really amount to much, but you trickle the numbers and you get a whole weapon perk’s worth of Damage for the entire party virtually all the time. Then you add the ‘Focus Target!’ damage, with 5 or 8 stacks being +20% and +32% Damage respectively, amounting to +37% or +49% Damage (without the double stack bug, which would be +56.5% Damage), especially on Captains and Monstrosities when you have opportunities to upkeep ‘Redirect Fire!’ stacks.
There’s also a point to make that Survivalist has a high opportunity cost for right-side builds. It’s not feasible to take with every build, even if it is functionally one of the most prominent auras.