Is cover REALLY nerfed, or nah?

[ValentineSnow]

You're playing at semantics. If inner release bo longer made gcds direct hit, but the tooltip on fell cleave said "when IR is on, this skill gains direct hit" you could claim they 'nerfed' inner release. But if you just do what you always do (hit FC 5x) nothing will change. They just shuffled the words around.

That's what's happening to cover. If a monster deals 100k damage and you cover that target, you will take 80k damage. They shuffled the tooltips but the EFFECT from using cover has not changed. I and others have outlined the specific situation that cover will not function the same way multiple times. If you are in tabk stance and cover someone else now, you reduce 20%+20%. That no longer exists. But that was extremely niche as you would be using cover as MT (unlikely) AND be in tabk stance (fairly unlikely), or the other situation is being the OT and be in tabk stance (wut?).

The rest of your argument hinges on damage scaling to account for the baked in 20%, which is flatly speculation. They could have been accounting for tank stance in their designs and nothing changes. They could up all future damage by 25% to tanks ro compensate. They could land in the middle (10% etc). We dont know and therefore it's pure speculation.

The only way cover will be less effective is if you are doing bad stuff now, like OT in shield oath and 'potential' damage scaling based on pure speculation.

The nerf is the oath cost. The rest of all the nerf arguments are speculation or semantics on where the 20% reduction come from. Unless of course you OT in shield oath and cover people. Then you got nerfed, but that's what you get for oT in tank stance :P

That's not at all what is happening to cover because cover is no longer in the equation to get the 20% mitigation which is the whole reason you used cover. How do you not understand this?

Before the change if a mob is about to use a tankbuster on the MT I can cover them and it reduces the damage taken by 20%. If I provoke the mob before the tankbuster I am taking the full hit unless I use mitigation. (Cover is the better option).

After the change if a mob is about to use a tankbuster on the MT I can cover them and it reduces damage taken by 20% at the cost of 50 gauge. OR I can just provoke the mob before the tankbuster and reduce the damage taken by 20% at no cost AND can use sheltron because I didn't waste my gauge on cover. (Provoke is the better option).

So in the same scenario before and after the change cover is no longer the more effective option after, in other words COVER'S EFFECTIVENESS HAS BEEN REDUCED. Even without the gauge cost post-change cover is, at best, on par with just provoking the mob which is still less effective than pre-change cover which is BETTER than provoking the mob.

And you can say "oh that's only one scenario where cover is less effective" but that's the thing. That is THE scenario that made cover good! Without that it becomes incredibly niche.

If a PLD only used Cover for this one scenario, then they probably never taught themselves to use it effectively when healers or DPS were dying in roulettes or at hunts.

These sort of roulette and hunt scenarios are probably what SE is considering and which are unaffected by this change.

We are talking about planned use in raiding. But since you bring up random emergency situations, actually yes, cover is also nerfed in that sense. Since no PLD is gonna sit on 50 gauge that could be going into a sheltron or intervention just in case an accident puts someone in danger, cover is now no good in those situations.

Unless someone happens to get in trouble right as you get 50 gauge you won't be able to cover them when that emergency situation strikes, it can only really be effectively used in a planned way now. So unless you have a suicidal party member who tries to kill themselves like clockwork, you can't count on cover to be ready on a whim to save someone.