Cover should be a Role Action

Before the PLDs and folks who wanna claim it's part of "PLD's identity", I wanna point out that while it's usually the Knight class in FF games that uses it, there's still exceptions, and I think FFXIV should be one of them.

I think the ability does a disservice to PLD's toolkit since it provides extra utility that must be considered when balancing the tanks, and PLD would be better served with another ability.

Since its (imo necessary) nerf, the skill is back to having very niche uses. Ones that frankly, every tank should have the option of.

Also, I make no effort to hide the fact that I think creating tank diversity with defensive skills is a perilous path of never ending imbalances for no good reason.

Give us well thought and diverse dps rotations as well as aesthetics please.

No need to pretend this game is something it isn't.

I actually wouldn't mind cover being moved to a role action. in its current form, it is very costly in terms of oath gauge, with a lengthy cooldown to boot, and it sometimes doesn't get used by PLD due to the distance from the person they're trying to cover unless the PLD is offtank.

there have also been plenty of times that I would wish I could give some form of mitigation to others when playing DRK below lv 70, and this would be a really solid way of giving all tanks a way to mitigate team damage while not being so strong that it can be abused. maybe its cooldown would have to be lengthened to accommodate for two tanks being able to use it in the same instance for trials. perhaps 180 sec cd?

as for the hole left in PLDs kit, i'm not too sure what could be added. I wouldn't want to see another defencive cooldown, as i believe changing sheltron to a base 8 second duration at lv 35, and giving it a trait to decrease its cost to 30 gauge at level 66 or so would be much better for its kit, but i guess replacing cover with another defencive cd would ease that issue. maybe bring bulwark back?

Cover is already incredibly situational for PLD. I don't see how that would be any different as a Role action. It would either be unecessary, or essential, and I don't want to have to Cover people as a DRK or GNB.
I'd rather they didn't make more job skills role actions. Certain imbalances between jobs are perfectly acceptable and Cover is one of those. DRK can TBN the other tank, GNB can cast HoS and Aurora on other players, and WAR has Nascent Flash.

I'd much rather they enhanced PLD's identity, by giving it an ability (shared cooldown with Spirits Within perhaps) that deals more damage as your HP decreases, the classic 'Minus Strike' if you will.
This would interact with Cover in the OT role, as you could Cover, take damage, then use Minus Strike instead of Spirits Within.
Essentially you're making SW/MS a part of the rotation where you need to discern if you HP is closer to max or closer to zero and you can make use of Cover without negatively impacting your SW use, as MS would be an alternative.

Cover is a rarely used ability as-is. Making it a role action wouldn't suddenly change that at all.

Got to ask why though?

It is niche enough on Plds that it wouldn't hurt but nor would it really be beneficial to other tanks so what's the point if it was old Cover might be more worthwhile but as it is your asking the skill to be uncoupled from pld gauge to be a free cd to all tanks including pld, which means they will probably nerf it again.

If you want to look at why I think this look at Repose on healers, Sch and Ast never needed sleep, they had more than enough tools to handle things without it, yet Repose was taken from Whm to be given to Role Actions for a single quest that is lv80, and has since been removed from my hotbars as they never needed it before or after, SE doesn't even design stuff with healers having sleep, 1 quest does not justify a skill to be taken from 1 job to be given to the role.

Unless SE were to design things around all tanks have cover I see no point taking it from Pld.

Not that good of an idea IMO. Cover makes more sense for PLD as it has a shield, while others do not. While others might be able to parry, logically it would make more sense to have a cover like skill on a job with a shield. I'm primarily looking at this from a more realistic stand point.

If they made it a role action they could design fights around people actually wanting to use it.
That's an interesting idea.

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Originally Posted by bundythenoob

there have also been plenty of times that I would wish I could give some form of mitigation to others when playing DRK below lv 70, and this would be a really solid way of giving all tanks a way to mitigate team damage while not being so strong that it can be abused. maybe its cooldown would have to be lengthened to accommodate for two tanks being able to use it in the same instance for trials. perhaps 180 sec cd?

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It could be on a 60s cooldown and the current version wouldn't be problematic in most fights. Most cover usage in previous expansions was either to forestall a tank swap (by giving the non-PLD MT another defensive cooldown or to transfer a damage up debuff) or prevent a knockback on another character. The former is covered by a combination of tanks having more than enough defensive cooldowns now and tankbuster mechanics targeting both MT and OT. The later was covered by all jobs now having access to Arm's Length/Surecast.

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Originally Posted by ItMe

If they made it a role action they could design fights around people actually wanting to use it.
That's an interesting idea.

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That would likely just lead to them doing what they do with interrupts: Once per tier there is a ability (usually cast by a add) that requires an interrupt to avoid a wipe.

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Originally Posted by Lucy_Pyre

Cover is a rarely used ability as-is. Making it a role action wouldn't suddenly change that at all.

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That's not even a problem though considering role actions generally get used far less than other abilities.

Half or more don't get used in most fights, so Cover fits right in by that metric.

More importantly, why keep an ability rarely used as a core ability?

I'm not on board with deleting the skill entirely, because I think it's a fun ability to use, it just has such rare use cases. Ones that I don't think should be limited to PLD.

Edit - That all said, what ItMe said does hold in that if all tanks have a specific utility, they can add mechanics to require them. I see no downside.

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Originally Posted by DWolfwood

That's not even a problem though considering role actions generally get used far less than other abilities.

Half or more don't get used in most fights, so Cover fits right in by that metric.

More importantly, why keep an ability rarely used as a core ability?

I'm not on board with deleting the skill entirely, because I think it's a fun ability to use, it just has such rare use cases. Ones that I don't think should be limited to PLD.

Edit - That all said, what ItMe said does hold in that if all tanks have a specific utility, they can add mechanics to require them. I see no downside.

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Tank role actions: Rampart, Low Blow, Provoke, Interject, Reprisal, Arm's Length, Shirk.

Extensively used in all/nearly all EX/savage/ultimate fights: Rampart, Provoke, Reprisal, Arm's Length, Shirk

Used rarely in specific savage fights: Interject

Never used outside of casual content (because lolbossimmunetocc): Low Blow

Almost every single piece of the tank role actions sees extensive, regular, use. Now personally, ever since the change to Interject in ShB I've been a very vocal proponent of SE making more use of the skill in EX/savage/ultimate. Even though it was a minor thing I quite liked the bit in E1S adds phase where each tank had to interrupt their specific add's cast of Mana Boost in order to prevent the following cast of Mana Surge from wiping the entire party with a raidwide blast. Perhaps my liking of interrupts has to do with the fact that I played SWTOR before FFXIV, and interrupting of specific skills in PvP in that game was a very important thing, but I do feel that it's an under-utilized mechanic that could have at least a little bit more potential from a mechanical perspective in fights. As for Cover, well, if SE were to make it a tank role action with something like a 90 or 120s CD then I think some sort of mechanic where a tankbuster gets targeted on a DPS or healer, rather than the tank, forcing one of the tanks (or both if two of them go out) to identify the target it was going on and Cover them to mitigate it would be neat. I can see that wiping pugs in savage constantly though.

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Originally Posted by Lucy_Pyre

Tank role actions: Rampart, Low Blow, Provoke, Interject, Reprisal, Arm's Length, Shirk.

Extensively used in all/nearly all EX/savage/ultimate fights: Rampart, Provoke, Reprisal, Arm's Length, Shirk

Used rarely in specific savage fights: Interject

Never used outside of casual content (because lolbossimmunetocc): Low Blow

Almost every single piece of the tank role actions sees extensive, regular, use. Now personally, ever since the change to Interject in ShB I've been a very vocal proponent of SE making more use of the skill in EX/savage/ultimate. Even though it was a minor thing I quite liked the bit in E1S adds phase where each tank had to interrupt their specific add's cast of Mana Boost in order to prevent the following cast of Mana Surge from wiping the entire party with a raidwide blast. Perhaps my liking of interrupts has to do with the fact that I played SWTOR before FFXIV, and interrupting of specific skills in PvP in that game was a very important thing, but I do feel that it's an under-utilized mechanic that could have at least a little bit more potential from a mechanical perspective in fights. As for Cover, well, if SE were to make it a tank role action with something like a 90 or 120s CD then I think some sort of mechanic where a tankbuster gets targeted on a DPS or healer, rather than the tank, forcing one of the tanks (or both if two of them go out) to identify the target it was going on and Cover them to mitigate it would be neat. I can see that wiping pugs in savage constantly though.

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Even provoke isn't extensively used unless you're doing some weird unnecessary tank swaps, I mean come on.

Back in SB there was actually a NEED to voke->shirk, due to stances still reducing damage, etc., but even coming back to the game in 480 crafted gear tanking with 500 players, I had literally no problems managing hate. Even in tank swaps, just turn it off and you're fine 95% of the time (the other 5% being if the other tank literally does nothing).

Arm's Length is admittedly used a lot NOW, because it was ADDED in ShB.

And you haven't been raiding that long if you think stuns have never been used in raid tiers. Hell, even Low Blow itself had a specific purpose in stunning arms in A4S when it came out as part of DRK's first kit. Stuns were used more extensively than both Arm's Length and Interjects at some point.

One tier or expansion aren't the end all be all, and Cover can add more mechanics as well.

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Originally Posted by DWolfwood

Even provoke isn't extensively used unless you're doing some weird unnecessary tank swaps, I mean come on.

Back in SB there was actually a NEED to voke->shirk, due to stances still reducing damage, etc., but even coming back to the game in 480 crafted gear tanking with 500 players, I had literally no problems managing hate. Even in tank swaps, just turn it off and you're fine 95% of the time (the other 5% being if the other tank literally does nothing).

Arm's Length is admittedly used a lot NOW, because it was ADDED in ShB.

And you haven't been raiding that long if you think stuns have never been used in raid tiers. Hell, even Low Blow itself had a specific purpose in stunning arms in A4S when it came out as part of DRK's first kit. Stuns were used more extensively than both Arm's Length and Interjects at some point.

One tier or expansion aren't the end all be all, and Cover can add more mechanics as well.

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It isn't a question of what's inherently necessary. It's simply the easiest & safest way to do a tank swap for the tank taking aggro to voke while the tank swapping off then shirks to them.

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Originally Posted by Ultimatecalibur

That would likely just lead to them doing what they do with interrupts: Once per tier there is a ability (usually cast by a add) that requires an interrupt to avoid a wipe.

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This is true, but they could always change what it does.
As an off the wall example: what if instead of reducing damage to people behind you it blocked off orange AoE markers? Something as simple as that would definitely influence strats.

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Originally Posted by Lucy_Pyre

Even though it was a minor thing I quite liked the bit in E1S adds phase where each tank had to interrupt their specific add's cast of Mana Boost in order to prevent the following cast of Mana Surge from wiping the entire party with a raidwide blast. Perhaps my liking of interrupts has to do with the fact that I played SWTOR before FFXIV, and interrupting of specific skills in PvP in that game was a very important thing, but I do feel that it's an under-utilized mechanic that could have at least a little bit more potential from a mechanical perspective in fights.

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Considering one of the "major" changes in ShB was making the interruptible actions visible. I was expecting interrupting to be a lot more prevalent in ShB. It is kind of saddening that their inclusion in fights seems more an afterthought than a core factor. Both tanks having Interject should mean that fights like T1 ADS shouldn't be problematic anymore.

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As for Cover, well, if SE were to make it a tank role action with something like a 90 or 120s CD then I think some sort of mechanic where a tankbuster gets targeted on a DPS or healer, rather than the tank, forcing one of the tanks (or both if two of them go out) to identify the target it was going on and Cover them to mitigate it would be neat. I can see that wiping pugs in savage constantly though.

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Which might be exactly what the game needs to do to reintroduce tank "skill" back into the game. I'd rather have tank skill measured by healer/dps survival through use of Cover/Intervene/TBN/HoS/NF than by dps numbers.

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Originally Posted by ItMe

This is true, but they could always change what it does.
As an off the wall example: what if instead of reducing damage to people behind you it blocked off orange AoE markers? Something as simple as that would definitely influence strats.

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Cover is conceptually and mechanically fine as it currently stands. I was more disparaging the formulaic fight design that the devs have developed.

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Originally Posted by Lucy_Pyre

It isn't a question of what's inherently necessary. It's simply the easiest & safest way to do a tank swap for the tank taking aggro to voke while the tank swapping off then shirks to them.

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If we're talking someone you can't rely on, yeah sure.

That said, there's still not that many tank swaps in a fight. Some never use them even.

Obviously it's a necessary skill with how the game is now, but you ignore the fact that the game could have just as easily been a single tank endeavor, and the skill would be completely useless given how easy threat is to manage in this game.

So again, giving a utility skill to every tank can open up more gameplay options.

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Originally Posted by Ultimatecalibur

Considering one of the "major" changes in ShB was making the interruptible actions visible. I was expecting interrupting to be a lot more prevalent in ShB. It is kind of saddening that their inclusion in fights seems more an afterthought than a core factor. Both tanks having Interject should mean that fights like T1 ADS shouldn't be problematic anymore.



Which might be exactly what the game needs to do to reintroduce tank "skill" back into the game. I'd rather have tank skill measured by healer/dps survival through use of Cover/Intervene/TBN/HoS/NF than by dps numbers.



Cover is conceptually and mechanically fine as it currently stands. I was more disparaging the formulaic fight design that the devs have developed.

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I myself was also surprised about the lack of interjection in most shb content. I expected the revamp to make it so that more attacks would be interjectable, or to also have more things for tanks to do instead of dps since they butchered the kits. I am all for adding more tank skill, but i doubt it will be implemented due to accessibility issues.

Personally, I am strongly against adding any more "role" actions. This just ends up going into the "homogenisation" direction.
In fact, I would've the role actions reduced, either for aesthetical or identity reasons.
Most common/simple example would be Rampart -> Shadowskin on DRK.

I agree on the point that cover has very little to no use, but I don't think the reason is because of its nerf alone. Ofc, the gauge requirement was uncalled for, especially since cover doesn't provide any additional mitigation anymore. Honestly, it's a disgrace that SE nerfed such an iconic action to this bad, niche ability, yet they have to nerve to cry about how it's so hard to handle the button bloat...

But there is more to it. Since enmity management is basically non-existent anymore, or at least there are no challenge to it, cover has less uses because of it. It was also used to "cover" team members that drew too much aggro to compensate - either because enmity generation was too low or dps loss would be too high.
Best example from Deltascape V4 savage, Neo Exdeath: there were constant resets, and it was common for a PLD to cover the WHM from earthshaker. (Remember that WHM didn't had any enmity reduction modifier on their healing actions back then. Their enmity generation with healing was insane.)
And now - with ShB - Tank stance doesn't reduce damage output anymore (although tank dps contribution in ShB content has been greatly reduced) and the enmity generation from it is waaay higher than any old tank stances + enmity combo could ever provide by a long mile. (Even iLvl 50 tanks can easily hold aggro versus healers/dps on ilvl 130 nowadays...)
Same goes for voke and/or shirk. In older content/previous expantions you needed to generate additional aggro over your co-tank (either by using enmity combo or burst, or since SB shirk). If that would become a hindrance, cover was your answer. (And I believe there weren't as many "you get a debuff-tank buster, tank swap is required" situations as we have now, but correct me if I'm wrong.) Or shirk was on CD or needed elsewhere, cover was your friend, and the 20% were essentially an additional CD.
Now it's just a shadow of its former self: no additonal mitigation, unnecessary high costs, high recast time, and very niche uses in general.

Unless the dev team buffs cover again, I can only see it being removed in the next expac.

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Originally Posted by ArianeEwah

I agree on the point that cover has very little to no use, but I don't think the reason is because of its nerf alone. Ofc, the gauge requirement was uncalled for, especially since cover doesn't provide any additional mitigation anymore. Honestly, it's a disgrace that SE nerfed such an iconic action to this bad, niche ability, yet they have to nerve to cry about how it's so hard to handle the button bloat...

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There is only one case where Cover lost it's "additional mitigation" and that was covering another tank. Currently if you Cover a non-tank target the damage inflicted on the Paladin is 80% that of what the target would have received. The gauge cost is there to balance Sheltron, Intervene and Cover usage (i.e. so you can't Sheltron yourself, Intervene on one target and Cover a 3rd), but neither Intervene nor Cover (nor any of the other single target protect abilities) is used enough on non-tanks that this balancing factor is noticeable.

Covering the other tank always seemed to be counter-intuitive to me so I am kind of glad that "benefit" is gone.

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And I believe there weren't as many "you get a debuff-tank buster, tank swap is required" situations as we have now, but correct me if I'm wrong.

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The 2+ stage debuff tank busters and both tank double busters were added to counter anti-tank buster/anti-tank swap Cover usage of ARR and HW.

I personaly don't want cover being a tank role skill, in fact i would love if the role skill on tanks would be complety removed from the game, cover should remain as a iconic skill of PLD and maybe instead of redirecting full damage just 20% of it and remove intervetion, idk something to make it more useful but don't stamp it to all tanks and have another useless skill i dont wanna add in my hotbar.

Cover is actually incredibly useful in cases of bosses that auto attack both tanks. E8S in my experience it is common in pugs for the other tank to mistime KR or die due to improper mitigation+healer failure, cover allots time for the healer to get the other tank back up without DPS dropping like flies. if anything, my main complaint is not being able to cover SPECIFIC damage types anymore (Ex. if somebody get stunned staring at shiva when she goes light form) you can't prevent damage from being taken by the player, in which case intervention wins out.

I don't think that Cover should be a role action. There are certain actions that are essential to the identity of a job across the series. It's a bit like making Bio Blaster into a role action.

I do think that Cover should be merged down with Intervention to function as PLD's co-tank support ability. Just reduce the recast and turn it into something you can channel on a party member at a fixed gauge cost per second. Bonus points if it makes your character do a little hop over to your teammate taking damage.

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Originally Posted by Lyth

Just reduce the recast and turn it into something you can channel on a party member at a fixed gauge cost per second.

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That would just turn it from a niche ability into a dead one. Nobody wants to stand there in a bossfight and miss several gcds because they have to channel cover.

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Originally Posted by Absurdity

That would just turn it from a niche ability into a dead one. Nobody wants to stand there in a bossfight and miss several gcds because they have to channel cover.

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I'm like half certain they meant it as a toggle like Faerie tether.

Exactly. An oGCD gauge cost over time ability with a shorter recast than it does presently to make it an adequate substitute for Intervention.

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Originally Posted by Kabooa

I'm like half certain they meant it as a toggle like Faerie tether.

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Well, the fairy tether is exactly what I described, it's just not you doing it and instead your fairy is unable to do anything else.

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Originally Posted by Lyth

Exactly. An oGCD gauge cost over time ability with a shorter recast than it does presently to make it an adequate substitute for Intervention.

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So basically exactly what cover does now, just with a cooldown more in line with HoS or Nascent, a more flexible gauge cost and the ability to end it early.

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Originally Posted by DWolfwood

Before the PLDs and folks who wanna claim it's part of "PLD's identity", I wanna point out that while it's usually the Knight class in FF games that uses it

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Knight (ナイト) is the JP name for paladin. The English translators have left it as Knight in many of the FFs, and many of the FFs that have updated their localizations to call it Paladin began as translations that used Knight. JP has used Paladin (パラディン), but it has been rare. So let's not use "Knight gets Cover" as a justification for why Paladin shouldn't be the only job that gets it. Knight and Paladin are the same thing in 95% of Final Fantasy.