Why is COV Tier 2 kicking my tail?

This is disgustingly true, people holding 2-5 minute cooldowns when they could be rolling those constantly is huge. A decent group will kill named long before they need to use every burn ability available to a class, you should constantly be utilizing something regardless of trash or named.

Bard's melody is currently Crescendo, Chrous, Psalm, Suffering, Assonant Binding, and Insult with Arura of Margidor

Try (at least as a test): Crescendo, Reckless, Pulse (regen/heal focus), Chorus, Psalm, .... (your rest), the bard can maintain them all, and Aura of Vhal`Sera instead.

Aura and aria (mostly) stack so prob a good idea to keep it in the lineup.

When you say the bard can maintain them all, you mean all the ones you listed, or all the ones you listed and the ones I listed? I think that's 8 songs with a couple long recast that will get skipped if they're not refreshed yet.

The simple answer is that Tier 2 CoV is overtuned. The difficulty scales up dramatically but the rewards do not. This is common for expansions that don't have level increases.

Yes. Have you tried it yet?

For one spawn cycle quick. Going to try it again tonight

That's the conclusion I'm coming to as well. I didn't expect to go to extremes like that. Not needing defensive discs outside of a named+ really bad luck pull to needing full time coverage. But after a couple days of hitting Finley and the sharks I'm noticing a difference. The healer merc is working much much less in Tier 1 COV even compared to T1 TOV.

• May have to fill in some Hate AA's too to switch out of Defensive Stance but I'll play with it and see. I do use the AA slows if just to free up some spell slots., but then I overwrite the Turgurs with single target Counterbias so the WAR gets the heal. Turgurs first (well Malx first then Turgx) to land the faster cast slow, and cripple, Counterbias to land the heal.
  Shaman usually just needs to drop Recourse or Intervention intermittently
  I haven't used Growth very much, may have to take a second look at it, but I do keep Ennui up- I get a little OCD on buff order so I can keep track of what's up and what isn't. Lupine Spirit, Aego, Vie, Talisman x4, Cloak Shield, Mount Blessing as a permanent book end of buff "groups" then Brace, and Ennui, then the Familiar Buff, which is then followed by Counterbias Heal, and Lioness. That way with just a glance I can see an empty hole of the "wrong" color in the "wrong" place.

I had been doing that through Augs in COTF drops, but then the augs disappeared. I figured out they're deeper into the xpac through upgrading other augs, but it's further into the xpac than I've gotten. I've been pretty much farming Finley for Ores and if it ever drops the HAgi Type 5, so maybe I'll keep one of the clubs next time I didn't look too closely as I'd already moved the bard into Luclin weapon drops from the bazaar.

I feel you are still missing the point here. ToV is older than CoV, it came out first. Mobs in ToV are easier than mobs in CoV.

Yeah that's one of the big challenges I had too. I'll send you a PM about it.

Yeah I get them backwards because COV comes before TOV in the alphabet. But in that case I had it right: The healer Merc - after the suggestions provided - was working much less than before (even) in Tier 1 COV (which is harder than and) when compared to what it was doing Tier 1 TOV.