Loving PLD in current savage.

[MatthiasSoulweight]

First time posting here! I'm really happy with PLD at the moment—it’s my favourite tank for the current savage content.

Guardian makes me feel incredibly tanky, and Imperator's ability to hit from range has removed a lot of the frustrations I once had.

One change I’d love to see is the removal of the Oath Gauge cost from Cover. I often find myself opting for Holy Sheltron or Intervention instead, as they seem like better uses of the gauge. If Cover were just a 120-second cooldown, I’d be more inclined to find opportunities to use it.

Thanks dev team for the great PLD changes.

[Valence]

I've had the off tank PLD use cover a lot in a progression environment, and to be honest it has a crazy value in keeping your healers or the MT alive in problematic situations. Perhaps it doesn't need the gauge cost, perhaps it does but it's too steep, either way, I think people dismiss it too much and it's undervalued as heck.

[Rithy255]

I personally don't see much value in cover, mainly because I feel like the times I could use it Intervention or spot healing with clemency is much more worth it

A lot of mechs such as stacks, or spreading out you can't even use Cover. Generally speaking the amount of uses you get on cover isn't worth, I've not really seen the value in Cover so far in Prog, but found value in abilities such as Clemency for recovery.

Cover needs a overhaul, It being off gauge is the first step of that I think it's range is way too short, Personally I think theirs a lot that can be done with cover to make it a more generally worth it skill, even taking it off gauge and increasing range wouldn't make it a skill you often use.

I love DT Paladin, Guardian is really nice, busters hardly hurt I generally only need to pop a Guardian + Rampart/Sheltron, for them so i can have cooldowns for Auto attacks ect, New atonement combo attacks gives paladin some more thinking for preparing for burst and a extra ogcd is always nice.

[Lyth]

I personally don't see much value in cover

Cover was always the wrong action... till it wasn't.

[Ramiee]

Cover is an incredibly niche ability, but when you you're able to use it in those niche circumstances god damn does it feel awesome.

[Valence]

I personally don't see much value in cover, mainly because I feel like the times I could use it Intervention or spot healing with clemency is much more worth it

A lot of mechs such as stacks, or spreading out you can't even use Cover. Generally speaking the amount of uses you get on cover isn't worth, I've not really seen the value in Cover so far in Prog, but found value in abilities such as Clemency for recovery.

Cover needs a overhaul, It being off gauge is the first step of that I think it's range is way too short, Personally I think theirs a lot that can be done with cover to make it a more generally worth it skill, even taking it off gauge and increasing range wouldn't make it a skill you often use.

I love DT Paladin, Guardian is really nice, busters hardly hurt I generally only need to pop a Guardian + Rampart/Sheltron, for them so i can have cooldowns for Auto attacks ect, New atonement combo attacks gives paladin some more thinking for preparing for burst and a extra ogcd is always nice.

I think cover and clemency are two part of the same coin, and dismissing one but not the other is missing a bit of the whole package. Covering someone in a smooth run is worthless since all they need is mitigation (usually party wide) and the usual heals (party wide) after the wave has passed. That's pretty much how every smooth run goes, party mitigates for an attack, party eats the attack, party heals the damage, next, repeat. Individual damage from mechanics is pretty much the same, whether on a tank or another player (if anything, tanks can take care of themselves anyway).

In prog if you have somebody at low HP next to you when they shouldnt be, or for whatever snowballing reason (people dead, party trying to recover and stabilize, healers are dead or unable to heal etc), you can cover them and save their ass, something that intervention may not do. Clemency also does this, which is true, but it doesn't always heal enough in those situations. Combining both is incredibly strong to negate all damage from someone, and the great thing is that one is an ability so it's not "one but not the other" kind of deal. A healer about to die can literally be saved with this, or a dps raiser. The problem imo is that yes, it requires some good reaction skills and awareness, but I do think it's also what can define a good PLD personally.

Now though, cover suffers from one crippling thing that even intervention doesn't, and it's range. I legit think they should turn it into Guardian from pvp.

Edit: it also suffers from another problem which is on the encounter side: not enough fights actually push you to use it, because other tanks don't have similar tools. If all tanks had their own flavour of cover, then you could suddenly do tank things and have mechanics requiring the OT to jump and cover someone with specific prey markers for example.

[Ramiee]

For the range of cover the best option I think is to make it extend further but have you asorb all the damage if you're close to the target and less and less the further away you are. That is if the range of it being extended is considered unbalanced by the Devs if it's further (even though it really isn't.)

[aodhan_ofinnegain]

The biggest issue with increasing the range and why I disagree extending any further is especially now that hitboxes are generally smaller again, there will be times you NEED to break the tether or it defeats the purpose as it can cause a worse chain reaction of death and chaos.

At the current range it is more than sufficient to allow control of breaking the tether when needed and still be able to remain max melee when needed to break it.

If the intended target is not in range of cover, by simply a couple of steps towards them, then that is on that party member in future to be closer when needed, not a need to increase the range.

[Rithy255]

I'll just add here that, yes cover can be useful but it's a skill that still competes with Paladin's other skill bar space. I think making Cover a tank role action would actually be neat and have room for interesting... I'm not going to deny that it can have those niche pop off moments, but i feel those moments are a lot more rare then even when you'd use something like Clemency (which is already a button that is very dependent on prog and mistakes).

Looking at it from a future standpoint having skills like cover on Paladin alone feels like a waste, because you can't really do many mechs with cover intended (because you'd be forced to bring a PLD), so it would have to be a role action.

I also think when you look at skills like cover, you can imagine they are held back from adding new interesting skills to PLD, while PLD from 80-100 gets no new hotbar actions, it has some creative merging in dawn trail, but I wonder if they could even keep that up for the sake of abilities like Cover (or shield bash lol).

[Valence]

The biggest issue with increasing the range and why I disagree extending any further is especially now that hitboxes are generally smaller again, there will be times you NEED to break the tether or it defeats the purpose as it can cause a worse chain reaction of death and chaos.

At the current range it is more than sufficient to allow control of breaking the tether when needed and still be able to remain max melee when needed to break it.

If the intended target is not in range of cover, by simply a couple of steps towards them, then that is on that party member in future to be closer when needed, not a need to increase the range.

I want to clarify that when I mentioned range, I referred specifically to the range of activation, not the range of the tether. It would be silly to have a tether going halfway across the map. That's why I compared it to what I believe to be the ideal model in Guardian from pvp PLD, which is essentially the same cover but with an initial gap closer attached to it. Also granted, it covers more things in pvp than it does in pve, notably interacting with Hallowed Ground, which pve cover doesn't do, but perhaps that would be too broken in pve.

Either way, cover is currently not a tool used in strats beyond extremely niche stuff, but as it stands a strong recovery tool that can't always do its job properly by virtue of being used in very reactionary moments, where the activation range becomes a real hurdle on top of the gauge cost.