Is cover REALLY nerfed, or nah?

[Freyyy]

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.

Cover + Sheltron was a thing, and it'll now cost the full meter instead of 50. It's still an unnecessary double nerf.

[KatsuraJun]

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

Exactly. Getting a free Rampart was essentially the primary reason the skill was good in the first place. Cover is generally useless without it, remember that this skill existed before the SB iteration lol. And guess how often people used it? Even if you consider the short range on the old version, the fact that it was basically a joke skill is telling of how useful a mitigation-less rampart is. The occasional prey mechanic like in Guardian will be its only niche.

[aodhan_ofinnegain]

We most likely will be using sheltron a lot less frequently compared to what we do in SB, since it will no longer gives MP return or proc soon to be removed shield swipe, and with no other means for gauge spending, it's not like spending 100 gauge is gonna be that bad like seriously what else are we gonna spend it on in all fairness, kinda pointless if you sit on it for the sake of sitting on 100 gauge. So, so what if we spending 100 gauge every 2 minutes or so, it takes roughly 44 seconds to build 100 gauge again afterwards.

[Cabalabob]

I went over this in the other PLD thread but I’ll consolidate it all here.

The main reason people used cover since Stormblood has been to cover the MT, basically working as a free cooldown without having to swap. In Shadowbringers that is no longer true.

PLD has the tank mastery trait, but so do all the other tanks, making it baseline. Any scenario where the PLD wants to take a hit for the MT they are better off swapping, because provoke doesn’t cost 50 gauge and the resulting mitigation is the same as it would be if you used cover.

Now if you look at all the times cover has been used since ARR outside of covering MT’s in Stormblood, most of them have been to cheese very specific mechanics. Basically limiting its usefulness to 1-2 fights per expansion. Or as an emergency button to protect a party member.

So Shadowbringers is sending cover back to being useful only in very niche circumstances. But it’s also making it useless as an emergency button. No one is going to sit on 50 gauge that could be going into a sheltron or intervention just in case someone needs an impromptu cover at some point. So now cover is even worse than it was before Stormblood (outside of the fact it only covered physical damage back then).

Now I’m not saying they shouldn’t have nerfed cover. The nerf was needed, if they didn’t then PLD would be the only viable OT while the rest would fight it out for MT. What I am saying is they nerfed it too much.

It should have either been:
1. Add a gauge cost but leave the mitigation, making it a stronger alternative to intervention on a recast (maybe increase the recast to 3mins). The gauge cost would limit the possibility of using it with sheltron unless you sit on your gauge making it about on par with other OT skills.

2. Remove the mitigation but not add a gauge cost. Putting it back to ARR/HW levels of usefulness, which was much less useful but at least it wasn’t effecting our resources that are useful.

Either way cover’s usefulness would have been diminished without completely invalidating it in almost any circumstance outside of once in an expansion scenarios.

[Argyle_Darkheart]

Oath Gauge cost is unjustified, all things considered; hopefully that gets removed.

[Jandor]

Is cover REALLY nerfed, or nah?

Yes, it's really nerfed.

Before it was on a cooldown.

Now it's on a cooldown and requires gauge.

Don't see how that could be anything other than a nerf tbh.

[Izsha]

Cover is nerfed because it used to be free and now isnt. Its effect is largely the same, but now that it competes with shelltron the standard cover+shelltron function is gone. But it still has all the same power and function to cover non tanks and cheese mechanics.

Theres bo way to say it isnt a nerf. But the ability was quite strong before and this doesnt nerf it into oblivion. It is just more specialized instead of a free CD.

[Inuk9]

Yeah it was a clear nerf. You cant cover and sheltron a heavy tank burst because you will die without more mitigation. Also you cant cover + sheltron without full gauge so maybe you need more planning on how to spend gauge from now on.

[Izsha]

Yeah it was a clear nerf. You cant cover and sheltron a heavy tank burst because you will die without more mitigation. Also you cant cover + sheltron without full gauge so maybe you need more planning on how to spend gauge from now on.

Not quite. Any tank buster you cover and shelltron today you would also survive in SB due to the baked in 20% mitigation. You would take identical damage with cover+shell today as you would in july. The difference is it would cost 100 gauge to do it instead of 50. The power of cover hasn't changed, just the cost. The single exception is if you cover someone while in tabk stance as you would stack tank stance with the 20% from cover. But that is a rare and strange situation to be in.

[Jeeqbit]

You are correct. Cover has not been nerfed.

The purpose of the 20% mitigation is so that when a PLD in Sword Oath uses Cover, they don't get destroyed as a result of failing to hit Rampart before the cast ends.

In 5.0, an off-tank using Cover will still have 20% mitigation in their traits so technically nothing has changed.

People are claiming it's nerfed because they feel that the main tank also having 20% mitigation evaporates the usefulness of Cover in high-end raids, but you could still combine Cover and Sheltron.

Cover is not just meant for high-end raids; it's meant for any situation where someone is low on health and a healer can't give them a full heal before a deathly cast finishes.

Covering the most vulnerable individual, whether that be a tank, healer or dps, can relieve some of the stress on those recovering the party from a near-wipe. At that point you might then hit Divine Veil and use Clemency on another vulnerable individual, thereby turning the tide of the fight. I've done this very thing plenty of times. I've seen plenty of other PLDs use Cover effectively in all levels of content as well. Whether that would happen in high-end content much or not is beside the point, because SE has to consider all types of content when designing jobs.

We could argue that bard's instrument actions cannot be used in high-end content and should therefore be removed.