How would you improve the Paladin's Cover skill?

[Duskane]

it needs to be like mega version intervention and Holy Sheltron in the one skill
like grants a Barrier to the PLD while also giving mitigation,regen etc etc something along those lines.

[Seku]

Hot take, but remove it, intervention is a better general version of it.

If really wanting to keep it, allow knight benediction and Knights resolve to be placed on the paladin. Cover, like shield bash is really niche and is something that isn't hard required in any content making it mostly button bloat. Intervention also does what cover use to do when it was good, which is putting up damage reduction on the PLD and providing an additional cool down. The only difference is that the PLD doesn't take the hit and tank swaps are now needed, which the former is what we'll be back to more than likely.

Cover is more a skill for if there isn't a dedicated-tank or enmity actually matters, which the game design of FF14 doesn't support, except on the rare occasion where a party member gets attacked and typical aggro mechanics don't apply. But we know that they'll live, otherwise PLD would be hard required, and SE won't do that. Though maybe...??? It's still possible to cheese some mechanics with it, but outside of that it's pretty useless.

[Faafetai]

Hallowed Ground and Cover never interacted, ever. There has been evidence showing this interaction never existed all the way back in ARR

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.

[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).

[Sqwall]

Personally I there are two ways to fix cover.

1. Drastically reduce the oath cost, or simply remove the oath cost. In addition to that, drastically lower the cooldown which is CRAZY long to begin with. Intervention is by and large, hands down, BETTER then cover and also gives knights benediction/resolve plus the damage mitigation. This is why I believe cover should just be "traited up" to be intervention. I don't even have cover on my hotbar, and it hasn't been there since HW. This is one avenue to fix cover.

2. Change cover to a "dance partner" buff that you can give to another party member of your choice. The buff gives them block chance mitigaion while the buff is active and they are in range. While the party member you cast the buff on takes less damage, the paladin now gains oath every time the person you cover get's hit results in a block. Paladins no longer generate oath off of auto attacks, but off of blocks. This would basically make it so that if i'm blocking I gain oath, if my cover partner blocks I gain oath. If we BOTH block I gain oath. This would synergize with Holy Sheltron and give crazy amounts of oath during large pulls much like it was back in HW with bulwark and how it gave you stupid amounts of oath to feed your sheltron.

Other changes I would make with #2 change in mind.

Passage of Arms spreads the cover buff to the party and every block they absorb gives you oath. Passage of Arms duration is now 6 seconds instead of the ridiculous 18 seconds it is now.

Change Devine Veil now uses Oath and now procs off of a block, and gives the party a one time block chance with a heal.

Shield Bash now uses Oath gauge and is a damage dump instead of an interrupt.

Royal Authority morphs into Atonement once the Royal combo is completed.

Trait up Circle of Scorn to Confiteor. Confiteor is now a ground AOE that lasts for 60 seconds with a potency of 15. Each tick of the DOT restores HP with a potency of 10 and this extended to your Cover Partner as long as they are in the circle. Confiteor is essentially a spell, but it looks and acts like a weapon skill. Let's make it a spell.

I could go on....but this WILL NEVER HAPPEN....pipe dreams.

[Absimiliard]

By replacing it with something that doesn't suck.

[Faafetai]

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).

Aye thats what I mean, so if it is an aoe or stack marker you will not take your damage but will take your party members damage. It doesn't negate all damage completely but it does work individually on yourself and cause some fun cheeses if you are trying to duo something with a healer. It is times like these I wish there were more details within patch notes and stuff because there was a time effects would go through cover so if you covered someone in neverreap you would go to space.

I am wondering something it is a very real possibilty that the attack was dodged or missed giving the illusion of hollowed mitigating everything...hmm. The times this would for the most part work was when duo ing content, it was never exactly at level for practice usually stuff like stack markers in 8 man content but with gear either at level or one tear higher. Or recently it was E2n in cryptlurker with a scholar. It is very possible shields being given out could have caused more of a stop gap for damage. It has been a while since I have tried to use the cover hollowed trick besides getting depressed about omega giving the damage down debuff. I think we were in scavean gear at the time so I must test if having higher gear effected this illusion of it working well.

It is honestly strange though because I only played for a bout a year or so when I first leveled paladin I swore it worked that way, but by the time I got to stormblood about 5 months later maybe earlier it stopped interacting in the way I thought. I could have just missed something, but until the time I tested it outside of Rhalgr's Reach it suddenly was acting differently. That was when I was testing when damage comes in and at what point the mitigation is calculated and if when covering someone if I mitigate if their damage will mitigate when it gets to me, which at the time it did.

I could sware it use to work when taking damage from the drop ships in prae when I first was leveling paladin where both I and the other tank took no damage, they didn't have holmgang up and the drop ship did nothing, next time I tried it way later after I was testing things in Rhalgr's reach it went through everything even hollowed didn't work on myself at all and just went right through like I didn't even have it up. I am sad I can't test this in old praetorium to see if the drop ships just ignored hollowed ground every time or if I activated it slightly too late. It was around 4 seconds which is usually the time it takes for mits to start working on my end due to latency so 3 seconds of ever mit is no mit usually. Unsure if this is just normal.

I know at least I think I know currently magic damage might still go through some things. Crits definitely go through mits sometimes as well as I really hoped they have since fixed this but dots if applied before hollowed would still cause you to die being the dot was applied and the damage would still be coming in even if you had hollowed ground up at 1 hp. With at level gear when watching friends level paladin the damage in dungeons ranges from getting nailed to getting tickled by the enemies and when you look at the battle log it has the full crit damage and no parried whatever percent next to it but regular attacks will indicate with fly text blocked or dodged.

I am wondering if the made a stealth change to things similar to updating player names to a high resolution version and saying nothing about it making me think I was going insane and than I found out they did indeed update the names to be clearer to see. Maybe it was interacting in this way for short times and they changed it and many just thought it was working the same since it always has.

Edit: Meaning many tried cover hollowed it didn't work so it would never work but one update or another it would randomly work, but currently it does not work. But at some point it might have or randomly.

[Venks]

Personally I think if they made it so the Paladin dashes to their ally, it would make Cover way more usable. I do a lot of content with my friends and there's so many times I could have saved their life with Cover, but they are too far away for me to make it in time.

[Arohk]

Its a useless skill you never need, if someone dies because you couldnt save them with cover, its their own fault anyway.

[Rithy255]

Personally I there are two ways to fix cover.

Your cover changes seem ok, while I'm not 100% opposed to defensives giving you extra gauge, I also dislike generating oath based off auto attacks, I'd personally want Oath to be generated either by GCD Attacks or a set timer, while using defensives correctly would help you gain extra oath, I'd personally find it cool if your "cover partner" could benefit in someway of your magic attack healing, as you tend to only benefit from it as the MT.

1) Passage of arms, With your rework would it still be a cone? I hope not lol. Other then that it seems intresting at the very least
2) Why rework Divine veil into a ability that has "block chance" current Divine veil is pretty much perfectly fine, although id kinda like the regen instead of the upfront heal you get.
3) Shied bash... wait so you want DPS and defensives tied together? No thanks PLD's will just spam shield bash for extra dps and expect the other tank/healers to pick up the slack.
4) Royal Authority becoming atonement would me you'd press the same button 4 times in a row... Honestly atonement needs a rework but I wouldn't be a fan of this change.
5) Confiteor healing 10 potency? that's like... healing 200hp on a Level 90 tank class? sounds pretty useless if I'm going to be honest, at least boost the potency, or let the cover partner heal off your magic attacks instead.