Cover?

[Maelwys]

We're doing Coil tonight, but we should have time afterwards for me to double-check this for both Physical and Magic damage.

OK. So. Testing.

Myself (50 PLD, i70/i90 gear) and a Scholar friend (Similar Gear) went down to MorDonuts and found ourselves a Friendly level 46 Giant Gigas.

This giant was consistently hitting my scholar friend for ~103-109 damage.
This giant was consistently hitting me for ~71-78 damage (no shield oath)

When I popped Cover on the SCH, the giant hits him and I cover him - I still take ~71-78 damage.

From about 30 minutes of testing on this single mob, we discovered that this damage could be BLOCKED and PARRIED and reduced by raising DEFENCE (+Protect and my "Foresight" cooldown) but nothing else I did by myself caused it to be reduced - using Cover and then immediately using a cooldown such as Rampart, Sentinel, Shield Oath and Hallowed Ground all did nothing.

Then we decided to get tricky.

First my Scholar friend used Stoneskin - both on himself and on me. This was completely bypassed by Cover - I still got hit for damage, and Stoneskin stayed up on us both. Same happened for Adloquium - the effect was completely bypassed.

Second the Scholar used Virus (mob stat debuff) - this reduced the damage taken noticably, both in and out of cover - which makes sense because as a debuff it's lowering the damage the mob outputs, rather than directly reducing the damage I or my friend receive.

Then finally the Scholar used Sacred Soil (+10% damage reduction patch) and things got really odd. It worked. I took about 10% less damage. And suddenly some of my own Damage reduction cooldowns started working in cover.

This was wierd. We tested further - first only having the sacred soil buff on me, then on him, then on both of us again. Sometimes it worked, other times it didn't. Almost as if it was picking what buffs to apply at random.

------------------------------------------------

Eventually, as I was examining the battle logs and about to log off for the night, inspiration struck.

There appear to be three simple rules regarding "Cover":

(i) When you use cover: the damage done to a party member is redirected onto you. This is initially affected by NOTHING except for your defence stat and Blocks/Parries. It bypasses buffs, it bypasses Stoneskin and it bypasses Shield Oath and Hallowed Ground. So the only cooldowns a Paladin has that will affect it would be Bulwark (+Block Rate) and Foresight (+Defence).

(ii) If you wait until AFTER Cover kicks in before using any cooldowns, then they will kick in and mitrigate damage normally as long as you leave enough time between activating cover and using the cooldown (They will NOT work if you pop Cover and then the cooldown right away, it appears that you need to leave a 1-2 second gap) This is true for Rampart and Sentinel and Shield Oath but NOT Hallowed Ground - Hallowed Ground, sadly, appears to NEVER work under Cover.

(iii) If you Cover someone, then use a cooldown, that cooldown only applies against the Covered damage - NOT the damage you take after the Cover duration expires. So if you pop Shield Oath mid-cover, you'll need to drop it and cast it again afterwards.

------------------------------------------------
We only started seeing this behaviour after Sacred Soil because Sacred soil reapplies its buff every few seconds - which started happening mid-cover. Once I recognised what was happening with Sacred Soil, I could see a similar pattern in the rest of our tests - we successfully tested this several times, example below:

+ The SCH used Sacred Soil
+ I used Cover on him.
+ He was then hit, which I took for 78 damage
+ He was hit a second time, which I took and blocked for 57 (-25%) damage
+ I used Sentinel (-40% damage cooldown)
+ He was then hit a third time, which I took and parried for 33 (-23%) damage

Battle Log Screenshot here

Another time I covered him and got hit once - a parry for 58 (-23%) - then used Sentinel and Bulwark and saw four blocks in a row - three for 35 (-25%) damage and one for 42 (-25%) damage - Log Screenshot

------------------------------------------------

TL;DR version:

Basically if you cover your teammate, and the Mob whacks them 5 times... you will take 5 hits of damage. If you wait a second or two after using Cover and then pop Bulwark + Sentinel, then the first hit might get you for normal damage, but hits 2 through 5 will be reduced by 40% and have a high chance to be blocked.

You CANNOT use "damage ignoring" abilities like Stoneskin or Hallowed Ground at all, but you CAN use damage-reducing cooldowns like Rampart and Sentinel and Shield Oath after you Cover (or allied ones such as Sacred Soil!). Bulwark or Defense-buffing abilities like Protect and Foresight can be used either before or after you Cover.

[LoganNinefingers]

[Some good stuff]
---
You CANNOT use "damage ignoring" abilities like Stoneskin or Hallowed Ground at all...
---
[More good stuff.]

Nice writeup! We didn't end up testing SSkinning or Succoring you after Cover had been popped - might be the skins work if they're applied shortly after cover, same way as the mitigation cooldowns do.
If one thing comes of all this, at least we'll have a few less PLDs wasting their Hallowed Ground when Covering =D

[Lex_Luger]

Cover Stuffs

Wow, great post. I appreciate the work that you and your buddy put into this. Good to know a few tricks and get some more understanding about cover. Seems like the rule of thumb is, if you KNOW you are going to have to cover someone shortly (I.e. your friendly full i90 BLM in Turn 4 that's burning down a spinner rook), it's not a bad idea to pop foresight and bulwark right before. In the need for more mitigation, rampart/sentinel/shield oath all will work as well, so long as you wait until there's about 10-9 seconds left on Cover, however worth noting that said mitigation will stop working once cover ends, not once the CD actually ends.