Cover should be a Role Action

[ArianeEwah]

Personally, I am strongly against adding any more "role" actions. This just ends up going into the "homogenisation" direction.
In fact, I would've the role actions reduced, either for aesthetical or identity reasons.
Most common/simple example would be Rampart -> Shadowskin on DRK.

I agree on the point that cover has very little to no use, but I don't think the reason is because of its nerf alone. Ofc, the gauge requirement was uncalled for, especially since cover doesn't provide any additional mitigation anymore. Honestly, it's a disgrace that SE nerfed such an iconic action to this bad, niche ability, yet they have to nerve to cry about how it's so hard to handle the button bloat...

But there is more to it. Since enmity management is basically non-existent anymore, or at least there are no challenge to it, cover has less uses because of it. It was also used to "cover" team members that drew too much aggro to compensate - either because enmity generation was too low or dps loss would be too high.
Best example from Deltascape V4 savage, Neo Exdeath: there were constant resets, and it was common for a PLD to cover the WHM from earthshaker. (Remember that WHM didn't had any enmity reduction modifier on their healing actions back then. Their enmity generation with healing was insane.)
And now - with ShB - Tank stance doesn't reduce damage output anymore (although tank dps contribution in ShB content has been greatly reduced) and the enmity generation from it is waaay higher than any old tank stances + enmity combo could ever provide by a long mile. (Even iLvl 50 tanks can easily hold aggro versus healers/dps on ilvl 130 nowadays...)
Same goes for voke and/or shirk. In older content/previous expantions you needed to generate additional aggro over your co-tank (either by using enmity combo or burst, or since SB shirk). If that would become a hindrance, cover was your answer. (And I believe there weren't as many "you get a debuff-tank buster, tank swap is required" situations as we have now, but correct me if I'm wrong.) Or shirk was on CD or needed elsewhere, cover was your friend, and the 20% were essentially an additional CD.
Now it's just a shadow of its former self: no additonal mitigation, unnecessary high costs, high recast time, and very niche uses in general.

Unless the dev team buffs cover again, I can only see it being removed in the next expac.

[Ultimatecalibur]

I agree on the point that cover has very little to no use, but I don't think the reason is because of its nerf alone. Ofc, the gauge requirement was uncalled for, especially since cover doesn't provide any additional mitigation anymore. Honestly, it's a disgrace that SE nerfed such an iconic action to this bad, niche ability, yet they have to nerve to cry about how it's so hard to handle the button bloat...

There is only one case where Cover lost it's "additional mitigation" and that was covering another tank. Currently if you Cover a non-tank target the damage inflicted on the Paladin is 80% that of what the target would have received. The gauge cost is there to balance Sheltron, Intervene and Cover usage (i.e. so you can't Sheltron yourself, Intervene on one target and Cover a 3rd), but neither Intervene nor Cover (nor any of the other single target protect abilities) is used enough on non-tanks that this balancing factor is noticeable.

Covering the other tank always seemed to be counter-intuitive to me so I am kind of glad that "benefit" is gone.

And I believe there weren't as many "you get a debuff-tank buster, tank swap is required" situations as we have now, but correct me if I'm wrong.

The 2+ stage debuff tank busters and both tank double busters were added to counter anti-tank buster/anti-tank swap Cover usage of ARR and HW.