How would you improve the Paladin's Cover skill?

[Cabalabob]

Is this a case of the Mandela Effect. I used this a bunch duo ing content. Haven't played much recently, but before endwalker dropped I was able to cover my partner who was whm through alot of stack markers and even recently E2n recently being maybe a few months ago. I have seen this mentioned alot that it did not interact in this way. One of the reasons I picked up paladin was after watching a paladin cover invulm through haukke manor hard when we did not dps the last boss slowly enough. The healer was alive, he took no damage. Healer raised us and we won. I am confused though because many are saying this never worked this way and still does not. I haven't tried it recently, but I am beginning to think I might be an orc from warhammer 40k and because I believed it would work it just randomly worked. I wish I could have taken a recording of events if it has indeed changed to no longer work this way. I know it interacts differently depending on mechanics like in Alphascape V3.0 when the balls come down for the soak mechanic that even with a shield will still give you the damage down debuff even if you cover invulm the healer and sometimes it does not always work. Has this really just never been a thing and the times I have seen it done or used it just a false memory and my clears I have duo things as tank and healer are all just a dream of a butterfly?

Edit: At some point before endwalker, months before, it this stopped working to where hollowed would work as a regular mitigation rather than an invulnerability or not at all. I noticed it changed during old Praetorium when attempting to use the trick on the main tank during the drop ships. It no longer worked as it use to. The co tank took no damage but I had gone down to less than half health. Which is fine, but just something I noticed. It is strange this was never a thing. Do wish I could find more information on this as I have just my memory to go off of and the check mark of clears for instances I have done without a full team.

As someone who has played since 1.0 alpha and mained GLA/PLD since ARR launch, I can tell you Cover and hallowed ground have never interacted. In the case of AoE you will take 0 damage from your portion of the damage but from the covered portion you’ll still take damage. As a tank you’ll still likely survive a 2 person stack taking only one persons portion of the damage and other mitigation besides hallowed does still apply so it’s entirely feasible you covered someone and still survived their portion of the damage, same for haukke, you would only be taking the explosion damage of 1 person and your healer would be protected.

There is definitely some Mandela effect going on with it because you can find testimonials of all sorts including people claiming they covered + hallowed eruptions in ifrit hard in ARR, but there’s so much wrong with that (not only does cover not interact with hallowed but in ARR cover didn’t even protect people from magic damage).