Cover Mechanic is horrible

[Fluhi]

The problem is that natural cover is 100% damage mitigation (when not standing up taking aim and shooting) within the 45 degree cone on the other side from blasters etc.

Whereas the portable cover only mitigates 20% of damage.

 

Do you now see the difference in importance?

 

It would be nice being able to hide behind the rock and take no damage when hunkered down from the blaster wielding enemies shooting from the opposite side.

 

100% cover effect works with any cover even crouch and is not realiant on what type of cover you are in just that you have a object between you and your target. Natural cover spots put you next to boxes, logs, railing, etc. If you use portable cover or crouch next to a box, logs, railings, etc you will also get the 100% protection. This protection is indicated by a green sheild icon above a target you have this bonus against.

 

Green cover shield icons only have 3 requirements.

1. Be in any cover

2. Line of sight broken by a world object or landmass when in inactive cover state. This is checked per target.

3. Target within 35m of you.

 

Generically

Portable cover, crouch, and natural cover are all the same thing. Crouch is Cover. Portable Cover is a passive defense bonus added to Cover. Natural Cover spots are a spot you can roll to that then puts you in Cover after the roll.

[Qishari]

Hello all,

 

While we still want your feedback on your experiences with cover, we did want to let you know that the patch notes for 1.0.2 do have some fixes for the cover ability:

 

 

Classes and Combat

 

Bug Fixes

• Corrected an issue that could prevent players from taking cover when targeting large NPCs.
  
• Fixed a bug that caused some abilities with activation times to be interrupted when used from cover.
  

 

 

 

 

Edited January 3, 2012 by Qishari

[Tholena]

I must disagree with the OP. I play a gunslinger and absolutely love the cover mechanic.

 

Something you should try:

 

Check your keybinds... make sure:

 

F = Enter Cover

Shift-F = Enter cover at current location

 

That keeps you from moving when you don't want to. Other than that, I've found cover to be very effective in both PvE and PvP.

 

Tholena

[Vicentegrev]

one thing im noticing about using cover is that my quickslot bar auto swaps to my Cover Bar even if im trying to use abilities that are not on my Cover Bar

 

for example, I want to use Takedown which is on Quickslot 1, so I press SHIFT + 1 to go to that bar but the game automatically reverts me back to my Cover Bar as soon as I try to switch

 

anyone else notice? anyone find a way to prevent it from doing so?

[GengisKahn]

This is absolutely false. Lethality has no way to proc TA aside from Shiv, making it 100% necessary to be in or near melee range (<10 yards) for a majority of fights.

 

Medics should not be in cover in almost any circumstances. In fact, Medic/Concealment using Medic to proc TA and Concealment to spam Laceration is a fine leveling spec. End-game of course, almost all energy should be spent on direct heals.

 

ONLY Sniper gets real use of cover once ACs are chosen.

 

This is absolutely false.

 

Lethality is a mid range spec, and medics should be in cover every time they dont need to move if they have some object near because damage reduced is damage not being neccesary to heal.

 

I have leveled as medic from lvl 10, and i used cover in every single pull in the entire game.

 

Medics make a HEAVY use of cover. Cover is a core mechanic of IA, its not meant for snipers only, if it was meant for sniper it would be a sniper only ability.

 

Also, 10 yards is not melee range, its mid range.

Edited January 4, 2012 by GengisKahn

[GengisKahn]

Gas grenade does not make lethality ranged. Cull, Weaking both are 10m that is melee range, shiv, hidden strike, flashbang, diabilitate are all melee and part of lethality. You don't spam dart and gas grenade in lethality. Lethality should not be using cover they are a mobile user. Dot's while closing, melee to provide your burst.

 

Healing doesn't do damage at range it is heals which all heals are 30m. Shiv, sleep dart, hidden strike are all useful for healers and all are 10m or less. Snipe is the least efficient use of energy for a healer compared to shiv, backstab, hidden strike, corrosive dart, sleep dart. You should be meleeing as a medic as you will save energy, be using a instant over a cast time, have all your CC avialable for use, get TA procs from shiv, be able to use Carbine for AE off those abundant TA procs you get as a healer, and can use your interupt to save high damage attacks when the rest of your group that has them won't use them. At times you will stay away while doing heavy healing but when damaging you will want to be in melee to where at times you can just keep hot going and use shiv and hot procs of TA to fuel surgical.

 

Cover is not a core for operatives. So please tell me these abundant uses of cover that dwarf all the benifiets a operative gets for melee range since you seem to believe i don't know jack about operatives.

 

 

OK, 30m is range, 10m mid range (lethality goes here), <4m is melee.

 

Concealment is melee, Lethality is mid range, snipers and medics are ranged.

 

You should never be meleeing as a medic, unless you are killing irrelevant mobs in which c ase it doesnt really matter what you do.

 

When you face things that really needs you to use your skills, you will want to use your energy and TA healing your companion or yourself, not dpsing.

 

Cover is a core for operatives, again, i used it in almost 90% of the pulls while leveling (after getting hidden strike i used if after opening with that, obviously).

 

The only spec that makes no use of cover is concealment.

 

And no, you dont know jack abaout operatives.

Edited January 4, 2012 by GengisKahn

[GengisKahn]

Hello all,

 

While we still want your feedback on your experiences with cover, we did want to let you know that the patch notes for 1.0.2 do have some fixes for the cover ability:

 

 

 

 

OK, as i said before, to start talking about a non broken skill we need:

 

1- Cover shouuld never sent you to a place that you are not seeing, because that takes away your control over cover unless you have the time to look around to see if cover is not sending you to stupid places.

 

2- Cover needs to NEVER sent you to a place where you are not covering from your target, meaning if i press cover i should not end with my back at my target, EVER, because that makes no sense.

 

3. If i am targeting something, cover should not sending me to a place where i am out of los nor out of range from my target, because i'm covering to hit the targeting, not because i like rolling.

 

This three things, plus the fix you are already implementing to avoid the interrupt thing, are a must so that the ability stops being broken.

[Fubbik]

You should never be meleeing as a medic, unless you are killing irrelevant mobs in which c ase it doesnt really matter what you do.

 

When you face things that really needs you to use your skills, you will want to use your energy and TA healing your companion or yourself, not dpsing.

 

Couldn't agree less. Haven't had much use for cover since I chose my AC basically. When questing with my companion I *always* use my melee attacks (backstab, shiv, debilitate, ambush) inbetween healing. Trash mobs, elites or champions alike. Of course if I need to heal full time, I stop meleeing (duh). Only exception is if a Champion has a nasty, uninterruptable PBAE ability in which case I keep distance.

 

If doing tough group content I could use cover on pulls to avoid some damage from the initial healing aggro, but with a good tank that is miniscule and the bugs assosciated with cover hasn't been worth the risk.

 

I am sure there is some gain to be had from using cover in certain fights, but the delay in taking cover, movement due to fight mechanics, LoS, range and other factors make me really not bother with it.

Edited January 4, 2012 by Fubbik

[Anelyn]

OK, as i said before, to start talking about a non broken skill we need:

 

2- Cover needs to NEVER sent you to a place where you are not covering from your target, meaning if i press cover i should not end with my back at my target, EVER, because that makes no sense.

 

Why ruin the Benny Hill moments of our lives :>

 

Just use portable cover - aka take cover in place. The difference is negligeable in defense bonus, you will always want to re-enter cover even vs ranged dps in order to mantain the charges of ballistic dampners.

 

Normal cover is more of a flavor thing to show off - or to move around fast, portable cover works perfect everytime.

[GengisKahn]

Why ruin the Benny Hill moments of our lives :>

 

Just use portable cover - aka take cover in place. The difference is negligeable in defense bonus, you will always want to re-enter cover even vs ranged dps in order to mantain the charges of ballistic dampners.

 

Normal cover is more of a flavor thing to show off - or to move around fast, portable cover works perfect everytime.

 

Only snipers get portable cover, and not from scratch. Cover is an IA mechanic, not a sniper one.

 

Cover as it is today is broken. Yes, crouch or cover in place can be used to overcome the broken cover mechanic, but thats only a patch that players can use INSTEAD of the broken mechanic, its not a solution to the broken mechanic.

[Tholena]

OK, as i said before, to start talking about a non broken skill we need:

 

1- Cover shouuld never sent you to a place that you are not seeing, because that takes away your control over cover unless you have the time to look around to see if cover is not sending you to stupid places.

 

Use Shift-F (or whatever you bound to "cover in place") instead of F

[Tholena]

Only snipers get portable cover, and not from scratch. Cover is an IA mechanic, not a sniper one.

 

Cover as it is today is broken. Yes, crouch or cover in place can be used to overcome the broken cover mechanic, but thats only a patch that players can use INSTEAD of the broken mechanic, its not a solution to the broken mechanic.

 

Honestly, I've never rolled to cover in a place I didn't expect to, at least not since low levels. I learned to always look to see where it plans to send me and have found that adjusting my angle a little bit will make it send me where I want. It is a matter of practice using the roll system.

[Caon]

Honestly, I've never rolled to cover in a place I didn't expect to, at least not since low levels. I learned to always look to see where it plans to send me and have found that adjusting my angle a little bit will make it send me where I want. It is a matter of practice using the roll system.

 

I still roll into unwated places unless I shift-f. I don't always have the luxury of looking for a palce in a heated battle. And if the mob moves away I have to scramble to get up and put cover down closer. Especially during then I am prone to hit F because I need to get back in the fight.

 

My friends laugh at me as I roll across the screen. Honestly, the distance of some of these cover mechanics is terrible.

 

And then there is the ever loving rolling into cover beside a different group. I think a mechanic should be put in, if sending you to that cover spot will aggro currently non-hostile mobs it will be disabled. Either that or have some sort of stealth where as long as you are in cover you won't aggro.

 

Again shift-F fixes this, but it entirely removes the point of enviromental cover.

 

Some of the positioning is also very terrible which leads me to believe they had a program place cover points in area where certain criteria are met. These really need to be cleaned up, a few times now I've rolled behind a large crate that doesn't give line of sight.

[myslead]

this was probably said a couple of times already, but

 

press

 

shift + f

 

all problems fixed.

Edited January 4, 2012 by myslead

[Fluhi]

OK, 30m is range, 10m mid range (lethality goes here), <4m is melee.

 

Concealment is melee, Lethality is mid range, snipers and medics are ranged.

 

You should never be meleeing as a medic, unless you are killing irrelevant mobs in which c ase it doesnt really matter what you do.

 

When you face things that really needs you to use your skills, you will want to use your energy and TA healing your companion or yourself, not dpsing.

 

Cover is a core for operatives, again, i used it in almost 90% of the pulls while leveling (after getting hidden strike i used if after opening with that, obviously).

 

The only spec that makes no use of cover is concealment.

 

And no, you dont know jack abaout operatives.

 

There is no mid range as all melee classes need 4m attacks to fuel thier 10m stuff to the fullest which all have 10m attacks. If you was mid range you wouldn't need to go to 4m to do shiv's for TA procs in lethality every 6 seconds to utilize it to the fullest.

 

Wow i must of missed the memo on my medic spec opertive. I only use cover when i want to be lazy. I'm in melee range all the time as a medic and only time i wouldn't be is dependant on how good the group is, nasty AE effects and weather i need to do alot of spam healing to keep people alive. Otherwise i would rather use stun, 15 energy shiv for ta, or 10 energy backstabs for same damage as snipe all instant that allow me to still use my interupt because i'm in 10m or less range then use a 1.5 second cast pushback vunerable 20 energy cost snipe that doesn't give ta. But then again i'm not trying to play operative as a ranged dps healer if i was wanting that i would of choosen sorc or merc which are better suited to that task.

 

Cover is only core to you, not operative there is a difference. Just like some don't understand that targeting a target and using the idiots guide to cover skill called take cover with a green shadow guy present anywhere will make you roll to where it is and yes it can be off screen it doesn't read your mind. If you didn't want to roll you take cover in place instead problem solved. Cover is alot better and more fluid then it was when i got in beta. You can cover good distances now compared to then, and you get it at lvl 1 instead of later, and one button with some awareness suits most people's needs for it now.

 

So if Cover is so core to operative where are all the talents for snipe, probe, and headshot? I don't see any. I guess by your thinking the melee skills a sorc's gets are core for them and they must be in melee because you know they got it as a inquisitor. Oh powertech can use their BH missle blast from 30m instead of thier 10m range PT flame burst so they can just stay at range. A merc should be in melee because they got rocket punch. Not all skills will be used by all specs and not all classes will use all base archtype skills though they have the option too.

 

oh and come up with a better line then you don't know jack about operatives because it degrades your post and makes it look trollish.

[Ikkeditnavn]

I have learned to not target my target prior to a pull and place my shield in a physical cover location. Simle enough. Shift + f also works nicely.

 

But while I manage to use cover, it doesn't mean that the little green man shouldn't pop up out of the cemera angle. There is already such a system in place, check it out and move the camera in a coverfilled area, the little green man/arrow will jump all over the place. So a reduction of the cone to fit the cemera nagle would be a most beneficial change.

 

I also subscribe to the no cover with the back to the target, however it does have some use. In encounters it can be a great help to basically roll around the zone leaving a melee target running in the middle. My personal best of this kind of cover-kiting was four in a row, too bad I didn't dish out much damage due to the interruption bug. But now that it is supposed to be fixed, this can be used to greater effect. And honestly it is a load of fun.

 

As noted by others, Lethality Operatives ARE melee. Shiv requires melee, and Shiv is required. That settles that.

[Berlexis]

I'll have to agree with OP. The rollover mechanic needs help.

 

I have rolled into wrong side of the mobs and pulled agro. I have ofcourse learned to drop my cover before targeting enemies because when you have enemy targeted, the agent rolls over to nearest visible cover instead of dropping his own cover. Many times I just zoom in completely into the floor to drop cover if I have enemies targeted due to auto-targeting agroed mobs.

 

It would make things 10x easier if they removed the rollover cover. Just keep the drop cover skill, it does work perfectly. What i don't get is why would the agent rollover to places if he can just drop cover wherever he is standing. It just seems so dumb for the agent to use all that energy to rollover behind an object. Not to mention that sometimes the agent doesn't drop the cover or rolls-over to nearest object. I keep pressing the button and he just stands there.

 

I am used to the work-around now but this needs to be fixed to enjoy the game play.

[Bamfed]

Like someone already said, if you are playing a Sniper cover shouldn't even be on your bar, Crouch should be. Once you get your shield you have no reason to use Cover. Operatives on the other hand, the cover mechanics can be a pain for those times you want to snipe something down before you go in to melee them.

 

Wrong. You don't need any of this on your bar. There are key bindings specifically set up for both of these skills. Cover system is suppose to be fluid like movement. you don't see a walk forward button on your bars do you? There is a reason for that. You start with cover on your bar to let those completely clueless players know they have cover.

 

My personal choice for roll into cover is middle mouse button. I use roll into cover as movement just as much as cover as it gets you places really fast. If i like where I'm at a simple hold of shift+mmb will have me cover in place.

 

I love the mobility of my sniper. my only suggestion would be to show all possible cover points and maybe make them clickable to roll to them as a choice. I find it a bit awkward trying to get to the correct side of multiple boxes stacked together.

[alexishomer]

There is also a delay from press the cover button. It takes maybe 2-3 seconds for the skilled that requires cover to become usable.

[youwillburn]

environment cover need to provide some sort of stealth so you don't instantly aggro the nearest mobs

[BruntFCA]

Operatives need the natural cover since they don't have the shield. Cover stops you being targeted by leap attacks in PvP and reduces incoming damage, so saying my op does not need it is BS...

 

The mechanic can also be useful for kiting people or getting out of dodge in PvP, I quite like being able to roll far..

 

Since there is a button that allows you to take cover in place anyhow, and not use the natural cover, what exactly is the problem? Reading the OP post he did not seem to know that you can take cover in place, even without the drop shield?

 

Hint also, if you keep your weapon out at all times, you will drop to cover faster. If its on your back the IA wastes time getting the rifle out before dropping to cover. There's a 1000 page thread somehwere on how the animations in this game bork the Global Cooldown.

[Bamfed]

I said only one tree is a melee stealth, and that is concealment.

 

Lethality is stealthy but not melee, lethality works at mid range mostly.

 

Medic is not melee either, and you will proobably not want to be meleeing your target.

 

So, again, only one tree is a melee stealth.

 

Cover is a core mechanic of the Imperial Agent class, only concealment is less prompted to use it, both lethality and medics have many uses for it.

 

You clearly dont know what you are talking about.

 

Step 1. Read your talent trees.

 

Step 2. List all talents you get in the 3 operative trees that require you to be in cover to use.

 

Step 3. Realize your not a cover class just because you have cover.

 

 

Just because you had a skill before you chose your AC doesn't make it something you are suppose to use. Every single class have abilities they get from 1-10 they they don't even need to train any more after they pick their AC and get AC specific abilities.

 

Your argument is a healer needs to use cover? REALLY? you get lots of BIG heals from not be able to move? So many people have so much to learn it isn't funny.

 

I'm not telling you how you CAN play your class. Feel free to play as badly as you want. The fact of the matter is cover using operatives are as bounty hunters tanking with unload... HORRIBLE BADDIES!!!

 

Edit** unless your just using the roll to cover as travel then your pro obviously.

Edited January 4, 2012 by Bamfed

[Monoth]

 

5. Sometimes I target a mob and go to take cover and I roll across the map into a pack of other mobs resulting in a death. This is just unacceptable. GET RID OF THE ENVIRONMENT COVER SYSTEM AS IT COMPLETELY RUINS THE CLASS. We know the developers take pride in their creations and will defend it to the end but this mechanic is just WAY too underpolished and needs to be completely revamped.

 

 

#5 is the one that makes me rage... i wish they would just remove the stupid cover points and just give our shield the stat bonus instead.... I'm so sick of finding my perfect setup spot and then when I go into cover I roll 20 feet away and im now 2" from the boss.... so frustrating.... The system just needs to be scraped, or make it so you have to stand like 3 feet from the cover spot before you roll to it... right now you can roll 20+ feet, so stupid..

[Monoth]

Operatives need the natural cover since they don't have the shield. Cover stops you being targeted by leap attacks in PvP and reduces incoming damage, so saying my op does not need it is BS...

 

The mechanic can also be useful for kiting people or getting out of dodge in PvP, I quite like being able to roll far..

 

Since there is a button that allows you to take cover in place anyhow, and not use the natural cover, what exactly is the problem? Reading the OP post he did not seem to know that you can take cover in place, even without the drop shield?

 

Hint also, if you keep your weapon out at all times, you will drop to cover faster. If its on your back the IA wastes time getting the rifle out before dropping to cover. There's a 1000 page thread somehwere on how the animations in this game bork the Global Cooldown.

 

 

Cover system is an exploit in Huttball, i can roll up to cover spots above me, i'm sure thats not intended by the developers...

 

I've been using "F" and it rolls me clear across the screen when I don't want it to..... What button do we have that allows us to use our shield cover instead of rolling to a spot?

Edited January 4, 2012 by Monoth

[Fluhi]

Cover system is an exploit in Huttball, i can roll up to cover spots above me, i'm sure thats not intended by the developers...

 

I've been using "F" and it rolls me clear across the screen when I don't want it to..... What button do we have that allows us to use our shield cover instead of rolling to a spot?

 

Use Crouch skill which can be found in skills ui window much like the Take Cover skill you get.

or

Use Hotkey Shift + F

Use Hotkey Shift + Middle mouse or mouse 3 I think.

Both are the default hotkeys for taking cover in place and are remappable to any key if you choose to change them.