Is cover REALLY nerfed, or nah?

[Izsha]

It won't work as effectively in the exact situation where it was the strongest. That's the point I'm making about this being a very clear nerf. I don't think it's unjustified, but trying to say it isn't a nerf is just straight up wrong. It's a justified nerf, but still a nerf, but some people managed to play mental gymnastics into thinking that it'll be just as effective as it is right now since we have the innate 20%, which is what I'm trying to correct; you have people straight up saying "it's not nerfed!" when they literally undid it into its pre-SB status.

The 1st thing I said was that it is a nerf.

As for damage scaling, it's not scaling for non-tanks therefore it is just as effective on everyone else. As for working on tanks, the damage scaling is speculation and you cannot state as fact that it will or wont. Either damage doesnt go up because content was always designed with tank stance in mind and nothing changes and cover is exactly as effective as always but with a cost, or they do scale up damage and then it will be nerfed in 1 singular function which overlaps the function of intervention anyway. But you or I cant state either as fact, only consider both possibilities.

Again, cover had to be nerfed (saying its nerfed for like the 4th time) so pld wasnt overbearing in its support kit compared to the other tanks otherwise pld locked OT meta for 2 more years. Nerfs come in cost or in effect. They chose cost. The mt effectiveness 'nerf' is speculation.

[ValentineSnow]

Nerfs come in cost or in effect. They chose cost. The mt effectiveness 'nerf' is speculation.

Except it's not, The mitigation is not ON COVER, it is on PLD. If the mitigation isn't ON COVER, then it is not COVER that is mitigating. That is 100% factually a nerf to the effectiveness of COVER. You do not need to use cover to get the mitigation, you can use provoke and that won't cost you 50 gauge to do.

If you take out every scenario in Stormblood where a PLD covered the MT (which was the primary use for cover throughout the expansion) you are left with 2 fights where cover was used. In an entire expansion cover is used TWICE. Sigma 1 to cover knockback from the ghost on a ranged dps and Alpha 3 to cover a ranged dps taking the tanks tether so they could keep dps uptime. And as of Shadowbringers the first example is null too because everyone can mitigate their own knockback, so now we are down to 1 fight....

Cover has gone from PLD's go to mitigation tool that could be used in basically any scenario, down to a niche that might be filled once or twice in an expansion, how do people not see how much of a massive nerf that is? It got it's effectiveness drastically crushed AND got a cost added on to the new, far less effective, version.

[Izsha]

Except it's not, The mitigation is not ON COVER, it is on PLD. If the mitigation isn't ON COVER, then it is not COVER that is mitigating. That is 100% factually a nerf to the effectiveness of COVER. You do not need to use cover to get the mitigation, you can use provoke and that won't cost you 50 gauge to do.

If you take out every scenario in Stormblood where a PLD covered the MT (which was the primary use for cover throughout the expansion) you are left with 2 fights where cover was used. In an entire expansion cover is used TWICE. Sigma 1 to cover knockback from the ghost on a ranged dps and Alpha 3 to cover a ranged dps taking the tanks tether so they could keep dps uptime. And as of Shadowbringers the first example is null too because everyone can mitigate their own knockback, so now we are down to 1 fight....

Cover has gone from PLD's go to mitigation tool that could be used in basically any scenario, down to a niche that might be filled once or twice in an expansion, how do people not see how much of a massive nerf that is? It got it's effectiveness drastically crushed AND got a cost added on to the new, far less effective, version.

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

[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.

[aodhan_ofinnegain]

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, 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 monster.

Cover will be mostly as effective in ShB as it is now, you will just need to wait 22 seconds into a fresh encounter before you can use it. As Izsha has stated, it is simply shifting around tooltips in terms of mitigation, if it continued to have both the traited cover and the new tank mastery trait, it would be busted, it would mitigate around ~38% before any other mitigation was accounted for. (might as well have Sentinel active every time you cover someone)

Cover has been used to cheese a tankbuster so to prevent a tank swap or delay a tank swap in SB (o2s was a good example of this, where you would cover the MT after he gained 2 stacks from Catastrophe, and have cover transfer the third stack onto the PLD), just as much as it will continue to do so in ShB, the only difference is now it will cost 50 gauge but the mitigation value is mathematically the same.
Cover will still help ease CD usage of other tanks like in o12s with the tank share, using cover to bypass the magic vuln debuff, meaning if you blow 100 gauge on cover + sheltron you've saved your co-tank a CD or 2 and you haven't lost anything of major worth since what else are you gonna spend gauge on. It will still work in the same ways to maximise uptime as in o11s to abuse mechanical situations.

Also as a little tip you could also have you're co tank use their intervention equivalent on you to boost the mitigation on the dmg going through cover if you were short some gauge for sheltron.

[Izsha]

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).

Again semantics. All you are telling me is that they buffed the provoke option, not nerfed the cover mitigation.

Today: 100k tabk buster incoming.
You use cover take 80k.
You provoke you take 100k.
You do nothing mt takes 100k ot 80k (stance dependant)

Shadowbringer:100k tank buster.
You use cover and take 80k.
You provoke and take 80k.
Do nothing mtntakes 80k.

Tell me the part where cover got worse? Nerf means it is worse. What they did was BUFF provoke via passive mitigation. They BUFFED the MT eating busters. If war does 5k dps and drk does 4kdps then shadowbringers comes out and war does 5k and drk does 6k, war didnt get nerfed. Cover is just as effective as always and provides thenexact same result from using it just as this 5k war example is the exact same before and after the example drk buff.

Tanks got better at taking damage. Cover remained the same. Yes, that means cover will be used less often (as I said). And it HAS to relatively less powerful to keep pld from OT for 2 years. But they did it by buffing everyone and everything around it. This is what people mean when they say balance through buffs instead of balance through nerfs.

[Galactimus]

You said it yourself.

Doing "absolutely nothing" is now the same as using Cover.

Both will take 80k damage, so why bother.

Hence, how often you use Cover has been greatly diminished.

Therefore, it's been nerfed in usefulness.

[KatsuraJun]

Today: 100k tabk buster incoming.
You use cover take 80k.
You provoke you take 100k.
You do nothing mt takes 100k ot 80k (stance dependant)

Shadowbringer:100k tank buster.
You use cover and take 80k.
You provoke and take 80k.
Do nothing mtntakes 80k.

You can't really look at it this way, because cover should be looked at in the context of how much more damage you block compared to the MT doing nothing.

SB: 100k tank buster incoming.
You use cover mitigate 20k damage more than the MT would by doing nothing
You provoke you mitigate 0 damage more than the MT would by doing nothing

ShB: 100k tank buster incoming.
You use cover mitigate 0 damage more than the MT would by doing nothing.
You provoke you mitigate 0 damage more than the MT would by doing nothing.

That's a clear nerf in effectiveness when considering using cover on the other tank, which constituted the vast majority of its usage.

[Shougun]

Again, cover had to be nerfed (saying its nerfed for like the 4th time) so pld wasnt overbearing in its support kit compared to the other tanks otherwise pld locked OT meta for 2 more years. Nerfs come in cost or in effect. They chose cost. The mt effectiveness 'nerf' is speculation.

Personally I'd trade cooldown time to remove oath cost. I don't like oath cost as it makes cover more of something you anticipate using and at least in my mind that is counter to how I see the skill.

Ally is falling suddenly, Paladin swoops in glowing "I got u bae". They get married. Best skill ever.

With Oath cost now they look at their watch, sigh as they used the last bit of oath already for sheltron and just wave the ally goodbye.

Also just to hopefully get everyone, myself included lol, onto the same page of nerf/not nerf...:

The way I went about thinking about it (totally could be wrong)-

Shield Oath + Cover Pre-Change = damage is reduced by 20% before it reaches you, then your shield oath takes another 20% off of it. (Which is like.. wow amazing).
Shield Oath + Cover Post-Change = damage is reduced by 20% because of tank mastery, that's it.

Sword Oath + Cover Pre-Change = damage is reduced by 20% before it reaches you, that's it.
Sword Oath + Cover Post-Change = damage is reduced by 20% because of tank mastery, that's it.

So by removing the 20% off of Cover that you're nerfing cover for Paladin's in tank stance, and it's more of a balance / trade for sword oath. I am fine with the balance of double making 40% being changed, but I don't love the oath cost and I'd like to see something else to tantalize it's use (that doesn't have to be an extra 20% reduction lol).

I'd really like to see the oath cost adjusted (or removed..) and perhaps a small reward baked back in just to give it that extra oomph of encouragement, I'm fine if they felt the need to fiddle with the cooldown though.

Mostly because of the other thread that popped up here on Clemency I think we could go to peppering in a bonus in that direction. Something like you get a buff that lasts for ~15 seconds. It'll allow you to instant cast one oGCD clemency, and for half mp. If the target was your cover then it'll be fully refunded. Buff is consumed on cast (only one half / free instant cast clemency per cover).

May also perhaps consider preventing cover DR% from working on another tank (so say 20%->10 or 15% and won't work on a tank target, promoting Paladin to cover the healer/DD).