Quote Originally Posted by Marxam View Post
As for cover it would have been better used as a role skill at like lvl 20 and remove rampart. Rampart in the game is just button bloat as many of the tanks short cds already provide the same effect, and then some. However I see role skills as tech options and not another avenue to gain a mitigation cd. Things like shirk, reprisal, provoke are good examples of what should be role skills. Rampart is no longer needed even for the expansion its designed for because most cases you just over gear it or there are generally better options available to you job exclusively. That being said, the options of how I think cover should function as a role skills are either:

-Functions as it currently is
-Drop a small aoe for one person to stand in, still take dmg from individual
-Small radial aoe passage of arms, <5 yalms

The last two offer unique tech choices. Lets say a healer need to stack away from the party for a mechanic. Drop a cover aoe and they stand in it, even if its >10 yalms. The last option I'm more partial to as in dungeon pulls you can just pop cover and melees don't need to worry about dmg, as long as they are near the tank and the tank can afk for 10-15 secs to grab a drink of water. It could also have a neat aoe animation like Sheltron but a full 360, think of a Roman testudo formation and you get my idea.
Nobody is going to remove Rampart. Removing Rampart is essentially gutting everyone's kit so they won't have a 20% available. Every tank would be struggling to mitigate the tank damage otherwise, and some jobs (GNB, DRK) would have an abundance to use from to replace Rampart while others (WAR, PLD) would be left in the lurch to not have the mitigation abilities to cover the current damage output from Tank Busters.

Also, there's a problem with your thought for making Cover a role skill at Lv 20:

Imagine having to maneuver around that kind of skill just like you have to maneuver around for a BLM - except worse since it takes up more space and if you sit near it close enough, you'll give the tank damage you could've taken on your own. It sets up for horrible things to happen to the recipient on raid-wides especially, which from your design suggests it to be used for(which is a bad implementation due to damage intake). Taking ~83% damage from all that only to have it apply 8 times over will kill you due to how Cover works currently too. In case people don't know(yet again) Cover does not interact with Defensive Mitigation!

So Sentinel, Sheltron, Bulwark, Rampart, none of those mitigations will interact with Cover; the main reason being cheesing Tank Busters like PLD did in O8S. Cover currently is an archaic ability that needs replacement - and is something we were all hoping to get rid of in 6.3. Looks like we're going to be waiting until 7.0 for them to actually have an answer to Cover being near useless.