Cover -> Merge Old Bulwark Into Skill

I think most Paladins are in agreement that Cover is mostly useless; which is unfortunate since it's THE iconic skill of the job in Final Fantasy.

I understand how broken Cover was in SB, so I won't suggest just reverting the skill to that. Rather than that, I would really like to see it be converted into also providing a Bulwark like ability. How I see it would be re-designed is:

1) Still requires a party member to use, still provides the cover effect.
2) Add ability +60% to block rate through duration of cover. This would work on both direct incoming damage and damage incoming through the cover effect.
3) Drop the gauge requirement, put it on a 120 sec cooldown.

This would provide the "filler" personal mitigation skill that every other tank currently has (thrill, dark mind, camouflage) that Paladin had lost in ShB. It would also be "weaker" than their equivalents still, accounting for the fact that Paladin does have two raid-wide protection abilities. But this would put the skill back into use rotation, not bloat our skill-set anymore than it already is and thematically fit the job.

A nice idea, but I would rather have Bulwark as a separate button.

Tho, I agree with you that cover does indeed need a buff, since it has become nothing more than a niche signature move, useless outside of rather cheesy tactics. Still, your suggestions have some flaws:

- Bulwark effect is not reliable - even +60% rate doesn't mean 100% rate.
- Cover needs your party member within reach (10y), which is a pretty short distance actually. Even if you can target a mate, and distance yourself from them, yet the bulwark effect still remains, it would feel like anything else, but "cover".
- Cover and bulwark will be needed in different situations, and thus shouldn't be merged. Hence separate cds.

I would like to see a different approach on cover:

- (Your suggestion) Simply remove the gauge requirement, the 120s cd - which cover already has - are enough to begin with. As it doesn't work as an actual mitigation cd (on co-tank) anymore, you would need the gauge for sheltron.
- Gauge requirement remains, but all attacks on the target are being blocked (sheltron effect on 12s duration). 12s 100% block rate doesn't seem too broken for its cost and recast time.

In regard to bulwark:

- Either reintroduced as it used to be - +% block rate for 15s on 180s cd (maybe buff duration/cd?)
- Change the effect of bulwark from block rate to block strengh (e.g. 20% damage block to 30% damage block)
(- Both effects in one cd?)

I know this might end in increasing the button bloat. It's still nothing compared to what we had to deal with in 4.x, it's just 1 more button.

Bulwark was effectively merged onto Shelltron.

Cover putting you at 80% effective block rate is almost entirely the same as giving Cover it's -20% damage reduction back.

If we were to get a new skill or an effect added to one of our current skills, bulwark is not what I’d want to see. We already rely far too heavily on blocking as our only source of mitigation and have enough ways to force a block when we need it.

If we were to get something new I’d want it to be something other than flat mitigation (HP shield like stoneskin) or something that enhances our blocks (double block strength for the duration).

I agree cover as it stands is garbage and could use a buff, but more blocking isn’t what PLD needs.

You can't stack block, so using cover then Sheltron, like you could in SB (o12s anyone?) to mitigate a crap ton through the innate 20 percent mitigation it had plus a block of about 30 percent at end expansion levels was really good when used well.

Cover needs the damage reduction, or rather, we need more instances to use cover on a non tank teammate like Guardian's missiles. The damage would be tuned for a DPS or healer to eat it, meaning it'd tickle a tank, and cover would be valuable to use. Or have busters act like in o12s where they apply a vuln to the first person hit, then you could cover, reroute the damage to yourself and receive only the base damage as you would have no vuln like you could with Target Analysis in Final Omega.

It'd be something that you COULD bring PLD to for even more optimization, but didn't HAVE to, making cover valuable, but not necessary.