Is cover REALLY nerfed, or nah?

[Aurelius2625]

Seems that the enhanced cover trait was there, because tanks had no innate defense built into them, so it was seen as a buff.

Now that we have the new Tank mastery that gives us 20 percent mitigation always, it's not a nerf to remove that trait, right? Unless they increase auto damage and tank buster damage to meet that new mitigation....which would make the new mitigation trait...worthless? Right? Because you could just delete the trait, put the dmg the way it was again, and you'd essentially have the same thing...

So, I ask again, because that scenario seems pure lunacy, of them adding a useless mitigation trait that actually doesn't matter, Cover still has 20 percent mitigation baked into it, because all dmg to the PLD is filtered thru the trait, tank mastery.

The game wouldn't be able to tell which damage is going where, so it's impossible for them to raise damage "because tanks" because anyone could theoretically take those autos or buster.

[Freyyy]

Damage will probably be increased to match this trait. It's almost worthless, the only point of that is to reassure the overly defensive tanks that their 20% mitigation from old tanking stance is still there in some way. It'll also effectively make the other roles take more damage than before in case they take aggro (since they don't have this trait) but that's irrelevant.

[Galactimus]

Only one situation has changed for Cover.

A Paladin Off Tank who Covers a Main Tank will not mitigate any damage. Both Tanks have the 20% reduction so there's no point in Covering a Main Tank anymore (unless the Main Tank is out of cool downs.) You are better off using Intervention for 10-35% Mitigation on top of the Main Tank's 20% Trait instead.

So in that regard it did indeed receive a nerf. You use to be able to mitigate a Main Tank's buster by 20% with Cover, now you can't. However, now that we lost Ultimatum (AoE Provoke) as an emergency backup Provoke, Cover will still have it's uses to save the party when the Main Tank dies and Provoke is on cooldown.

[Aurelius2625]

But you're missing the point of cover: Saving CDs for the MT to use otherwise. By covering, the mt still has their defensives up for something else... that's the entire point. So you would use cover to eat the tank buster for them, so they could save ramp/veng/holm/shadow/LD, etc... for something else.

[Galactimus]

Hence the "unless the MT is out of cooldowns." And again, it provides zero mitigation when used on a Main Tank. Therefore, it's a nerf.

[Kalise]

A Paladin Off Tank who Covers a Main Tank will not mitigate any damage. Both Tanks have the 20% reduction so there's no point in Covering a Main Tank anymore (unless the Main Tank is out of cool downs.) You are better off using Intervention for 10-35% Mitigation on top of the Main Tank's 20% Trait instead.

If you're popping Sentinel and/or Rampart to buff your Intervention to 20/25/35% you're better off just using Cover alongside your 20/30/50% DR from using those skills on yourself. Since, it's unlikely that there will be a TB that will NEED stacked CD's + OT support skill to survive (Since if this is the case, then WAR will be mandatory because Holmgang's shorter CD will be necessary as there won't be enough CD's if everyone had to pop either an invuln or literally everything else)

Also, one of the main bonuses for using Cover on the MT, was where you could bypass certain mechanics and Tank swaps by the way that the damage being diverted away from the target worked.

[Freyyy]

But you're missing the point of cover: Saving CDs for the MT to use otherwise. By covering, the mt still has their defensives up for something else... that's the entire point. So you would use cover to eat the tank buster for them, so they could save ramp/veng/holm/shadow/LD, etc... for something else.

This was only the point of Stormblood's iteration of cover. It was too strong tho, considering PLD already has Intervention and all the other party mitigation tools. Making it cost meter on top of getting rid of the mitigation on it is a bit much tho. I would've done one or the other, but not both. Double nerfs are always bad. Cover will be back as an almost never used very niche button, just like it was in ARR and HW.

[Argyle_Darkheart]

Cover losing mitigation and costing gauge means it will essentially be reserved for mechanical advantage.

[Zwynfalk]

Cover will cost gauge and will have no built-in mitigation.

If you were going to use it on the current tank, you'd be better off using Intervention if you weren't going to pop other cooldowns or tank swapping beforehand and spending the gauge on Shelltron + whatever other cooldowns you were going to use.

As far as I can see, Cover's main use will be dealing with things like O11S, where a ranged DPS would take the tether and then need to be Covered for the following raid-wide damage. You'll be giving up 6 seconds of 100% block or 6 seconds of 10% mitigation on someone else for each of these tricks and you'll still have to wait 2 minutes between each one. It will be very situational.

[Bright-Flower]

Damage will probably be increased to match this trait. It's almost worthless, the only point of that is to reassure the overly defensive tanks that their 20% mitigation from old tanking stance is still there in some way. It'll also effectively make the other roles take more damage than before in case they take aggro (since they don't have this trait) but that's irrelevant.

Have they ever elaborated if they tune damage around tanks being in tank stance or tanks being in defensive stance? There may not really be that much of a difference.

In a sense though, since you generally wouldn't be using cover while in tank stance before anyway you still basically get the same amount of mitigation as before. you could potentially also cover with hallowed ground to completely negate a tankbuster or something I guess.