Shields and You: The Disappointing Truth

[(PSN)negativ21]

On 2018-11-27 at 7:43 PM, taiiat said:

there are some as it is (Arcanes mainly, and sorry to burst the bubble of people that never looked into learning but a couple of my Shield Tanks just laugh Warframes like Nidus off the stage and give Inaros a run for its money

Teach us, oh great shield master, of what builds you speak? I'm serious tho I'm intrigued. 

[taiiat]

 

7 hours ago, Xzorn said:

I feel the Adaptation mod was backwards. Instead of helping squishy frames survive a mistake all it really does it make beefy eHP more beefy.

If I were to design a mod like that it would do the opposite.
Start 90% mitigation including shields. Each hit taken of that type removes a stack of 10%. Gain a stack every 20 seconds.

right, Adaptation is kinda dumb but only for Warframes that don't 'need' it in the first place whether that be how they are naturally or because of Equipment specialization Players have added on to capitalize on it. (like double Guardian and Umbral Mods).

i'd buy that for a dollar. 
(reference so that nobody gets confused: https://youtu.be/85cL1HisrNc)

 

 

 

off topic but important math:

8 hours ago, pittaxx said:

since stripping armour works the same no matter it's value.

except for Corrosive Status, ofcourse - the rest of the available methods to weaken/remove Armor Scale linearly indeed, but Corrosive Status does not and as Enemies go up in Level you'll step up on the number of Corrosive Status needed like a staircase.

[Xzorn]

2 hours ago, (PS4)negativ21 said:

Teach us, oh great shield master, of what builds you speak? I'm serious tho I'm intrigued. 

 

Trinity, Mesa, Gara and to some extend Nekros make excellent use of shields.

It matters on the faction you're fighting as well. Void and Corpus use primarily Puncture damage. Least the dangerous ones which is -20% against Shields so added to the frame's natural buff mitigation it will give you more eHP against that damage type and better survival. You can also go further with it.

Mesa for instance using Shield Charger on her Sentinel, Redirection, Primed Vigor and a single Arcane Aegis will regenerate 141.6 Shields per second and not be encumbered by Shield recharge delay. This amounts to 2,832 eHP per second while Grace with Vitality + Primed Vigor will regenerate 48 HP per second amounting to 960 eHP per second.

Aegis itself can be quite potent as it doesn't care what your shield total is but there's still few frames who can really push the limit using Shields and it would be more dangerous to try and capitalize on Shields against Infested or Grineer due to Toxic and Bleed damage. There's this little corner of the game where Shields are very good.

[ShortCat]

@pittaxxHow about this:

• Shields cannot be penetrated anymore, neither with Toxin nor Slash procs.
• Right now, Shields offer protection only against Radiation and Puncture. On the other hand they are weak to 3 elements: Impact, Cold and Magnetic. That is not much of protection. Thus, increase natural resistance to "---" against every damagy type, except those 3 that are intended to damage shields. 

As a result, shields would not remain meaningless when confronted with "defense ignore" mechanics, especialy obvious how we cheese Corpus. Furthermore, they would offer decent natural protection of 75% (or 50%, or XX%). With this, shields would be a decent layer of protection at al stages of the game and all shield related percs had a purpose. At the same time, they remain weak to certain damage types and can be countered by enemies and by us.

[Synpai]

On 2018-11-27 at 10:41 PM, Ventura_Highway said:

Disclaimer: I like testing things by sticking them in Mot/ESO for 20 minutes/8 waves and seeing how they hold up.

I don't think flat damage reduction is a good idea. It will end up making shields certainly far stronger than health will be in early game stages, but in endgame like phys/ele sorties, let's say it's 50% DR? Two times the split second it takes for my shields to get deleted there is still not a lot of time at all. The rationale for this is that shields are not armor/health. Armor and Health are sizeable equipment and modspace investments for a Tenno that knows they will be under constant heavy fire. Shields? I stuck Guardian on my Moa and Capacitance on Volt. It works marvelously for most of the game and then crashes and burns in a spectacular manner

against seriously damaging enemies like the ones on the Valis when Fortuna just came out. Shielding is a lower maintenance, less reliable buffer against death than armored health intended for casters. Theoretically that's fine. The problem is that this tradeoff doesn't provide an appropriate bang for our buck.

I have strongly been thinking there need to be damage reduction too, but I think it needs to be stronger the more shields you have on. Obviously this is more complicated and leads to even more questions.

1) What matters? Total shields left or percent of max shields left?

2) How does this affect overshields?

3) What will this do for enemies?

These are not easy to answer. I hope to spend a portion of December writing a program that will let me model damage behavior so that we can simulate how the durability of shields will be affected under different durability mechanics. I have termed it my Warframe Beating Simulator.

My solution would have been to allow toxin procs regardless and prevent slash effects if your shield is up. The idea was, I figured, most sources of Toxin damage outside of the Infested are highly telegraphed (Nox), and that really, if you got melee'd by an infested with Toxic Damage, you deserved it. Toxic messes up Shield-reliants, Slash, health-reliants. That said, this doesn't account very well for Toxic Eximi and the Mutalist Osprey. Your idea is not bad.

You mean adding more mods to make shielding more viable? Previously stated here is my belief shields should be relatively low investment compared to health, so I must disagree. This kind of solution reeks a tad of band-aidism. We may also need to tally the means every Warframe has access to for bolstering Shields and Health.

You guys beat me to it 😛 I was thinking more along the lines of Ventura as well that it in someway needs to scale with your shields.

I was leaning toward the total amount of shields conveying damage reduction but then it would take calculating the EHP of frames making sure that they make sense. Then of course overshields, shield osprey, and things like enhanced shield corpus sorties e.e

[(PSN)negativ21]

7 hours ago, Xzorn said:

Trinity, Mesa, Gara and to some extend Nekros make excellent use of shields.

These are all DR frames r they not? Are your shield tank builds dependent on a DR build or do you actually just use shields for these when in combat with no DR. 

If so could u share your Trinity or Gara build?

[pittax]

17 hours ago, -N7-Leonhart said:

The purpose of the shields is not to eat a lot of damage and once. They are quite strong because they regenerate per default, and health won't regenerate without some sort of special mechanic. They may seem underwhelming at first, but if you do the math on how much damage a 740 shield can absorb and then regen over like 1h of survival, you will end up with a 5-digit number of total damage mitigated.

Yes, but we have limited mod slots, so unless you are going for face-tanking memes, you can only spare enough mods to boost one or the other, not both. And if health is an uncontested winner in 90% of the cases - we have a problem.
 

6 hours ago, ShortCat said:

@pittaxxHow about this:

• Shields cannot be penetrated anymore, neither with Toxin nor Slash procs.
• Right now, Shields offer protection only against Radiation and Puncture. On the other hand they are weak to 3 elements: Impact, Cold and Magnetic. That is not much of protection. Thus, increase natural resistance to "---" against every damagy type, except those 3 that are intended to damage shields. 

As a result, shields would not remain meaningless when confronted with "defense ignore" mechanics, especialy obvious how we cheese Corpus. Furthermore, they would offer decent natural protection of 75% (or 50%, or XX%). With this, shields would be a decent layer of protection at al stages of the game and all shield related percs had a purpose. At the same time, they remain weak to certain damage types and can be countered by enemies and by us.

Removing shield bypass is mentioned very often when talking about shields, and I've referred to it multiple times already. It would fix the main glaring weakness of shields, but it would plainly make them not interesting. Right now if you are shooting corpus, that shield can be either taken down or ignored, it's very distinct from the hp bar. If there was no bypass, you could just replace shields with pure hp on enemies and no one would notice the difference outside of maybe 2 OV mobs that have insane shield regen.

 

2 hours ago, (PS4)negativ21 said:

These are all DR frames r they not? Are your shield tank builds dependent on a DR build or do you actually just use shields for these when in combat with no DR. 

If so could u share your Trinity or Gara build?

Yes, these are mostly DR frames, which means they already have similar mechanics to what I am suggesting built-in into them, although I would still be reluctant to build them for shields only, as DR abilities tend to expire and you have to manage them well.

For Trinity, you generally go 1 of two routes: Bless or EV.
For Bless you want high duration, high efficiency and >=150% strength. Range can be ignored (my bless build is 219% duration, 160% efficiency, 34% range 155% strength). With this build you try to maintain your 75% dr all the time by using your 4, and then using your 2 occasionally to give a bit of energy and your 4 if someone manages to fail even with high DR.
For EV you want minimal duration, very high range and decently high strengt + Vampire Leech augment (my ev build is 12% duration, 105% efficiency, 235% range, 194% strength). With this build you spam your 2 to give everyone unlimited energy and decent amount of overshields and only use 4 to heal up your party members. DR is pretty much ignored with this build as you can't maintain the buff with low duration.
You can also make a build somewhere in the middle, but that build won't excel at any of the 2 roles. Also of note that trinity is a prime candidate to use Quick Thinking for defences, as she has a good access to energy regeneration.

Gara builds aren't as clear cut (and I can't give you exact numbers as I hardly play her), but you definitely want 129%+ strength to maximise DR. Beyond that I'd probably go for high duration, and a little bit extra to all the other stats (efficiency/range and MAYBE a bit more strength).

[(PSN)negativ21]

27 minutes ago, pittaxx said:

Yes, these are mostly DR frames, which means they already have similar mechanics to what I am suggesting built-in into them, although I would still be reluctant to build them for shields only, as DR abilities tend to expire and you have to manage them well.

Thanks man but I already know the builds for both frames for the most part. What I was looking for is what mods specifically that person uses to make their frame "shield tanky". Like they must have redirection, some supplemental mods, and some arcanes, but which specifically, so I can test that.

And the shield tank build in question depends on DR then I don't think it qualifies. Yes it's better than nothing bc the shields mean more hp to tank reduced damage, but I think the OP is proposing to buff shields in their naked state, not supplemented by an ability. 

If they don't require a DR build, then that's what I'm asking about. 

[-N7-Leonhart]

22 hours ago, iHaku said:

We have insane ways to regenerate loads of health on demand. Not just trinity, but operator arcanes can fully heal most warframes in a second and everyone has access to them (if they actually cared) while armor can reduce an absurd amount of damage at the same time.

where's my arcane that reduces damage taken by 2/3 for several seconds on being damaged while my shields are up? there isnt one. but there's guardian,

 

5 hours ago, pittaxx said:

Yes, but we have limited mod slots, so unless you are going for face-tanking memes, you can only spare enough mods to boost one or the other, not both. And if health is an uncontested winner in 90% of the cases - we have a problem.

Remember like 3-4 years ago, when there was a No Shields Nightmare Alert most squads would get wiped except for maybe Loki/Ash and Rhino? That was the true worth of shields if we could not regen health at demand.

So basically because the power creep has evolved enormously over the years and now we have tons of ways to regen health, shields are becoming less and less relevant. Agreed, but then what? Boost the power creep up even more in the case of shields? This is a matter that needs careful approach, otherwise I prefer if the shields would remain just as a means of defending just in case you didn't come equipped with tons of ways to regen health.

[Ventura_Highway]

On 2018-11-29 at 7:16 AM, Synpai said:

You guys beat me to it 😛 I was thinking more along the lines of Ventura as well that it in someway needs to scale with your shields.

I was leaning toward the total amount of shields conveying damage reduction but then it would take calculating the EHP of frames making sure that they make sense. Then of course overshields, shield osprey, and things like enhanced shield corpus sorties e.e

What does total mean here? If I have 600 shields but the cap for my frame is 1200, is the DR calculated off the 600 or 1200? I'm learning towards the 1200 right now for reasons of simplicity, but I feel like basing it off current shields would dissuade people from getting hit. The reaction healthframes to getting hit is to keep regening health. If a caster's shields are getting hit, I don't want them to think they can just keep sopping up fire. They should want/need to avoid taking excessive continuous damage.

[Synpai]

Just now, Ventura_Highway said:

What does total mean here? If I have 600 shields but the cap for my frame is 1200, is the DR calculated off the 600 or 1200? I'm learning towards the 1200 right now for reasons of simplicity, but I feel like basing it off current shields would dissuade people from getting hit. The reaction healthframes to getting hit is to keep regening health. If a caster's shields are getting hit, I don't want them to think they can just keep sopping up fire. They should want/need to avoid taking excessive continuous damage.

Current shields seems like it could at least start to put to use mods like the augur set and the like (with an increase in conversion percentage, but I was also leaning for 1200. It's quite the design pickle.

[Ventura_Highway]

40 minutes ago, Synpai said:

Current shields seems like it could at least start to put to use mods like the augur set and the like (with an increase in conversion percentage, but I was also leaning for 1200. It's quite the design pickle.

Well, if this was easy I'm pretty sure it would have been solved by now. While I'd like to actually test/simulate out whether or not some of these proposed changes work out in practice, that will have to wait for another time. For now I'm content to theorize about what is appropriate and elegant. Under the current-shields system, I tend to think it would be better to not introduce a lot of shield-restoring mods. Some, but not on the order of what health has. I'd probably trim down what some frames can do as far as shield restoring goes too, but the augur stuff unquestionably needs a buff.

Edited November 30, 2018 by Ventura_Highway