Paladin is the new hotness!?

[Astrelle_hyperion]

@JackFrost, often when I've been doing the cover on 3 truck in pugs with double PLD, the MT pops HG on second set, so stacks drop off with problem. Don't know if I've just been lucky with pugs that do the right thing given what I've done.

[Februs]

This hasn't changed at all. It was actually a common way of avoiding tank swaps back in the day. It just got a little less common now, because SE took a hiatus from Tank swaps in the recent Trials + Raids. It's nice that they brought them back, but that doesn't mean that we get to use cover any more than we were before.

The problem has never been Cover's utility. The problem is how little we actually get to use it. We don't neglect using it because the mechs don't allow for it. We neglect using it because Pld's are almost exclusively pigeon holed into the MT position (even when they really shouldn't be). Out of all of my runs in Midas so far, I have only been OT once. Almost every run, I'm being placed in the MT position by default. That actually includes my first ever run, in which I had no idea what I was even doing:

-"Pld in the party? Great. He can MT."
-"But I'm new here."
-"No problem, just watch out for x,y, and z. Ready check? Go go go."

Cover gets no use in that spot, so it might as well not be on my hotbar.

[Jpec07]

Tank got Headache, boss rears back a fist, I popped Cover. Not only do I then take the damage I would have taken had I provoked, I ALSO got knocked back according to the direction the boss was facing.

Further, you can Cover + Sheltron and get a free Shield Swipe proc every time. The best part? Each tank buster is ~2 minutes after the previous one, meaning you can do this for every one of them, without ever having to use Provoke.

The only issue I take with this tactic (which is admittedly a pretty badass tactic) is that if it isn't communicated, it will lead to wasted cooldowns. I experienced this yesterday in A5N - the OT (whose only communication with the group was a pull countdown macro fired when 3/4 of the group was still getting to the Fausts) decided to start using Cover on me halfway through the fight, without any prior instances. If they'd communicated that they were going to eat the tankbuster, I would have been more liberal with my cooldowns during the non-tankbuster phases, and wouldn't have wasted Sentinel+Sheltron on it.

The moral of the story: COMMUNICATE WITH THE OTHER TANK IN YOUR GROUP.

[Carstien]

It not even worth swapping on nm. The MT can blow a cool down before the stun and mitigate the attack regularly having it healed thru on the backside.

Sorry to inform you but that mitigation is useless, the buster ignores almost all mitigation except Shields and maybe HG. Sentinel, shadow wall, rampart, vengeance...all useless.

[Synestra]

Almost every run, I'm being placed in the MT position by default.

1. Use sword oath
2. Just stare boss
3. If someone says pull dont answer anything
4. Eventually other tank will pull when you dont respond anything
5. OT spot guarateed \o/

[SpookyGhost]

Sorry to inform you but that mitigation is useless, the buster ignores almost all mitigation except Shields and maybe HG. Sentinel, shadow wall, rampart, vengeance...all useless.

Maybe I just haven't done NM enough, but the buster in Savage does set damage that can be mitigated. Do you mean with the concussion debuff it ignores % mitigation?

[JackFross]

If they'd communicated that they were going to eat the tankbuster, I would have been more liberal with my cooldowns during the non-tankbuster phases, and wouldn't have wasted Sentinel+Sheltron on it.

You can't Sheltron the buster unless you're the OT using cover. You also still would have wasted Sentinel, because it doesn't have any impact on how much damage you take from the tank buster in A5N - it seems to bypass defense and all that jazz when Concussion is active.

1. Use sword oath
2. Just stare boss
3. If someone says pull dont answer anything
4. Eventually other tank will pull when you dont respond anything
5. OT spot guarateed \o/

In any content that you can solo-queue for via the Duty Finder, you can tank safely in Sword Oath. Literally all of it. I use Shield Oath as an on-demand 20% mitigation cooldown with variable duration when I tank Midas Normal on PLD. It goes up and stays up for the bigbulge biggerbrain segments of A5N, I use it to mitigate a 3-stack tank buster on Brawler (in addition to a cd), It gets turned on at the start of Uplander Doom and goes off when he does the shock attack after the stacks finish, and there's really nowhere in A8N that it's needed unless the healers are struggling, since there's no significant damage that you have to deal with in the entire fight as a tank, assuming swaps happen in p1 and your OT knows the final phase.

[Jpec07]

You can't Sheltron the buster unless you're the OT using cover. You also still would have wasted Sentinel, because it doesn't have any impact on how much damage you take from the tank buster in A5N - it seems to bypass defense and all that jazz when Concussion is active.

This is false. Defensive cooldowns absolutely mitigate the tankbuster, you just may need to time some of them (like Sentinel, Hallowed Ground, and even Sheltron, if you know how to use the magic pixel). If you try to use it while you're concussed, it won't work, but I've been able to successfully mitigate the damage multiple times. The trick is to use it just before the fourth stack. In my experience, the cooldown will last just long enough to shave off some of the incoming damage (I can say this as fact for the first few times I ran it when I didn't get the cooldown off in time, and wound up taking substantially more damage).

[JackFross]

This is false.

Or, rather than killing yourself irl by trying to pin-point timing a cooldown to the nanosecond to mitigate a hit that does 80% of your health, you could just assume the OT will provoke it or cover you and take 5k instead and use your cooldowns for whatever else you'd use them for, like how I pop Foresight for the first Bombs Away and Rampart for the second during each baby phase, since I always yell at my healers to stop being lazy and go be a monkey.

I just never noticed Rampart actually working when I tried, so I assumed~

And yes, I put it on before the fourth stack.

[Jim_Berry]

I've been a PLD for a while. Coming from FFXI, I'm used to MT. Has nothing to do with what I DON'T want to do.