First off I realize calling this a summary and then having the post this long seems a bit misleading. I suck at naming things.

With the release of WKN I felt it was a good time to release a completely biased comparison between our magic cover tanks and how they function when filling both the role of covering and provoking. All 7 star magic tanks will be considered even ones without a native provoke. Unit's without a native provoke will be assumed to either have Golem or Ifrit on with the provoke unlocked and Moogle Plushie equipped.

This is all assumed to be for single tank compositions. Using a 2 tank system (one tank provoking and the other covering) reduce the cons of a lack of provoke and boost the value of utility as you need to cover more roles due to losing a slot. That isn't what this post is about though so lets take a look at the units in no particular order.

Mercenary Ramza Mercenary Ramza

Mercenary Ramza is an interesting case. He probably has the lowest E. HP of the bunch before factoring in external mitigation. He also has his magic cover on a cooldown which can screw you over if he manages to die.

He does have some distinct advantages despite these drawbacks. First off he is immune to all regular ailments and charm. He is also when equipped with his TMR 25% resistant to all elements and has a 50% stop resistance. He also has an excellent equipment allowing him to equip any armor type and many weapon types.

All of this is great for a magic cover tank as it allows you to easily build resistance for whatever type of elemental attack your enemy uses. This also means you don't have to sacrifice a slot for status ailment resistance and instead focus your slots to defences.

On the provoke side he has a solid 3 turn provoke with a 40% damage mitigation attached. This helps keep him alive and means he can be flexible with esper and shield slot.

Unfortunately Merc Ramza has trouble balancing between DEF and SPR to pull off the roles of both provoker and magic tank. His cover mitigation is also slightly lower than other 7 star tanks at 50-60%. If the magic is mostly elemental though you can just focus on physical defence while maintaining high elemental resist to the relavent elements.

Beryl Beryl

Compared to Mercenary Ramza's vast equipment selection Beryls Equipment Selection is slightly more... limited. In the end this is what hurts him the most. He can't equip shields or heavy armor which both can be handy with building resistances for certain elements.

Beryl does come with some decent advantages over other magic cover tank/provokers though. First of all he has an innate 30% evasion and 2 accessory slots unused by his TMR. This allows him to fairly easily build for 100% evasion without sacrificing too much in the way of elemental resistance or stats.

Beryl also has a decent Light/Dark resistance naturally and can use his free turn to buff the teams light or dark resistance by an additional 70%. This makes him especially ideal for fights that favor at least one of those types of attacks.

Beryl also has 2 different provokes with a 3 turn duration. The first gives him a 30% damage mitigaiton. This helps but will often be overwritten by any decent mitigation buff. The other gives him an HP barrier and improves his counters in exchange for costing some LB crystals.

On the subject of his LB Beryl has a fullbreak on his LB that is competetive with the top tier breakers. This can let him improve your breaks if you are using someone with weaker breaks for you main breaker or let him fill in if your main breaker is unable to reapply their breaks at a crucial moment.

As long as the fight doesn't have too many elements that he has to build resistances for Beryl can be a very powerful tank capable of breezing past a lot of damage. On fights where the boss has accuracy or uses several elements Beryl might have more difficulty with this than some other tank options.

White Knight Noel White Knight Noel

I am sure anyone who has bothered to read this far has already been inundated with more information about WKN recently than they wish. I will briefly go over some of the advantages and disadvantages of him as well just for fair comparison.

First off for weaknesses. He inately has -50% resistance to fire. This doesn't cripple him but it can make it a bit more difficult to use him if fights with heavy fire damage as you have to dedicate more gear to countering this weakness. WKN also is a magic damage dealer/tank which means his counters and damage are all magic based. If you want to deal any sort of damage with him you have to dedicate some gear toward improving that but his damage modifiers are pretty bad either way. He also lacks much in the way of on demand support outside of his chaining. If your chainer doesn't have Tornado or Freeze frames then his kit doesn't give him much to do.

Now onto what makes him good. His passives are amazing. He easily gets to near the top E. HP for both physical and magical damage before counting his provoke or cover. Also his provoke is amazing. It has a great self buff combined with a massive 50% physical and magical mitigation which stacks with general mitigation. This means for the ability to soak raw damage he is pretty much unparalleled currently.

His LB is also a very nice 150% MAG/DEF/SPR buff for the whole party for 3 turns and a 41% MP heal. With some LB support either from gear or buffs this can be a fairly reliable MP heal and buff for your team. Most units that can provide any sort of decent mitigation already buff stats though so odds are this will mainly see use for the MP heal and making sure the party has a high buff up even when your buffer has to focus on other tasks.

While it isn't the most important use it is worth remembering that his multicast is a dualast for all magic. This lets him incoperate any spells he aquires from equipped espers into his moveset while still maintaining a single cast of something else. This can be used for casting a bar spell and chaining, dispelling and offhealing or whatever other combination strikes your fancy. Anyone can do this by equipping dualcast but this gives him that flexibility without sacrificing a slot for it.

Awakened Rain Awakened Rain

It's somewhat awkward to place whether to catogorize A. Rain with the innate provokers or not. He does have an innate provoke with mitigation but it only lasts for 2 turns which makes for a really awkward rotation. Either he would have to just provoke/cover or deal with turns in which the provoke would not be active. To have any sort of other utility in his kit he needs to equip moogle plushie and Golem/Ifrit in order to be able to provoke/magic cover and have a free turn for his utility.

Having to dedicate his esper and shield slot to improve provoke utility does hurt his ability to gear for elemental resistances. Especially when you consider his 2 innate resistances are fire and earth and he would have to have either Golem or Ifrit equipped to get a 3 turn provoke.

The additional utility he gains can be quite handy in the right situation though. He can do a self buff/mitigation/heal with Complete Awakening. He can give the team immunity for 3 turns to all basic ailments stop. He can also do some support damage/ chaining with his LB. Some other options are an HP/MP heal for the party, 60% MAG break on an enemy or a single cast raise on an ally.

Unfortunately none of his SPR based attacks seem to perfect chain with anyone else so they will at best be supplemental.

Awakened Rain is a fairly solid magic cover tank/provoker but has to sacrifice a bit of gearing flexibility to maintain access to his supporting options when working as a solo tank.

Basch Basch

I think Basch is in the worst position to fill the role of provoker and magic cover. He lacks any innate provoke and would have to sacrifice equipping his trust mastery to make use of Moogle Plushie. The other option would be losing 2 accessory or an accessory and armor slot to equip draw attack gear. He also lacks any innate resistance to ailments. This is all paired with him having overall unimpressive magical E. HP even before having to modify his gear.

If you can work around his issues he does have a few useful skills to contribute to your party. First off he can give himself auto-revive while also giving LB crysts to his allies. He also has the option of buffing the parties defenses while doing a moderate AOE heal. He of course has the ability to dualcast his breaks but at 50% currently they aren't going to do much. This will chance some when he gets his enhancements and the ATK/MAG breaks are buffed to 60%. Finally he has a stronger 3 turn 65% fullbreak with a 6 turn CD that can be put down as a emergency break if needed.

You can use him for the magic cover tank/provoker role but he probably performs best in a 2 tanks team.

Lilith Lilith

Lilith is is a bit of a better postion than Basch when it comes to juggling to roles of Magic tanking and provoking. She has innate 100% resistance to dark as well as resistance to the debilitating ailments and charm. Lilith has the same issue of Basch though in that she needs Moogle Plushie and Golem/Ifrit to be able to provoke. This does reduce her overall elemental resistance flexibility.

Lilith's main focus is her chaining. On her off turn she can chain with the Kingsglaive and Auroreole Ray family while potentialy charming the enemy. Most if not all future bosses will be immune to charm so don't expect to be able to use this as we go on. It's fine for old content though. Her other utility involves elemental imperils and providing AOE stat break immunity.

The best use of Lilith would likely be Dark heavy fights or fights that break your stats frequently. She can also be used for supplimental chaining but you will likely want someone else filling the chaning role on the turns which she is occupied.

TLDR

Order based on strength for this role.

WKN: Best raw tanking ability. Can help chain or Buff/MP heal. Lack of utility outside of chaining or his LB means you need to find it from espers or gear like Rikku's Pouch.

Beryl: Can reach 100% evade relatively easily while still getting full resists to at least 1 element. Good light/dark resists but inability to naturally equip shields hurts him

Mercenary Ramza: Ailment immunity, charm immunity and 50% stop resist. Has entrust. Good base elemental resist. Lower stats, cover mitigation and magic cover being on CD are his drawbacks. Magic cover on a CD will make him unusable on some future trials and make him the worst for this role.

Awakened Rain: Decent utility options and nice E.Hp. 2 turn native provoke means either giving up on utility or locking shield and esper slots to get a 3 turn 100% provoke.

Lilith: Useful utility options and chaining. No native provoke though. Lowers elemental resist flexibility and stats.

Basch: Weakest magic tank/provoker. No native provoke. Loses out on trust ability to acquire a provoke. Breaks are weaker than dedicated breakers.