Warframe Revised: Shield Gating Megathread

[SilverBones]

Shield Gating: Friend and Foe
Friend: First, let’s answer ‘What is Shield Gating?’ when it applies to you as a player. In this implementation, Shield Gating is the mechanic of preventing an instance of lethal (‘1-shot’) damage if you have Shields active. Simply put, the goal is to reduce the number of ‘1-shots’ you take when your shields are up, particularly for Shield-based frames.

When any shields are active, an incoming hit that depletes your last bit of Shields will not continue into your Health pool, and also triggers a brief time where your Health is protected. Once that period is over you can take Health damage normally. Additionally, you will no longer take Slash Status Effect damage to your Health while Shields are up. 

Foe: Enemies - Corpus in particular - also have received a bit of a Shield Gating, but with skillful gameplay you can overcome this. Any Headshots or shots to Weakspots  completely bypass Corpus enemy Shield Gating. In addition, 5% of the damage dealt when hitting the shield gate will target enemy Health - this allows you to take your Forma fueled weapons back to low level enemies and hit them hard instead of hitting the shield gate.

The goal here is to make Shields a mechanic you want to play against with Mods (Auras, Elemental) or to bypass with skill (Headshots). Slash Status Effects will now deal damage over time to Shields, Toxin damage remains as-is (bypassing Shields to directly affect enemy Health). Damage from Warframe Abilities will ignore the enemy Shield Gate (i.e if an instance of Damage from an ability is greater than the Shield value, it will go into health as well). 

Why:
Giving both Friend and Foe shield gating has two purposes: we want to reward skill a bit more in all Corpus missions, and give the ‘squishier’ frames a bit more viable edge and a chance to really explore Shield-focused builds. Toxin Damage and Status Effects are still your friend against Corpus or Shielded enemies! 

Please remember to leave your feedback in a constructive and civil manner! Remember, this thread is for FEEDBACK ONLY. If you have a bug, please make sure you submit your bug on this thread and follow the new guidelines!

[CephalonSamara]

Nice addition to all warframes in general, but what happens to Hildryn? The question comes to mind because she was supposed to have shield gating as her passive. SO does it mean she gets a new passive?

 

[Jeancly]

Yes please, don't just leave hyldrin there for months without a passive, just fix her immediatly...

[Fellas92]

So far looks really nice. Testing out mag and harrow at the moment, and I like the changes. Since these warframes can restore shields, their survivability is increased by a lot. No complaints here.

[mrbubblepants]

Shield  gating corpus just makes them more irritating to play. Id rather just skip them then try to aim at weak points while surrounded by them. it wont make them more challenging just harder to cheese. Im a cheese enthusiast i like feeling all powerful.

[CompanionCombine]

Now that shields are useful, can we expect an Umbra Redirection? I'm still going to be inclined to build for armor because it makes the other Umbra Mods stronger

[-VS-UMARRR]

I know that not a lot of people play Hildryn and that's why there is not a big cry out about this, but the shield recharge delay changes are a HUGE nerf to her survivability.

before the update at least the shields started to recharge to protect your tiny amount of 300 - 400 hp (with mods!) while being protected through the 3 sec invulnerability passive. now it takes the shields 4 seconds 'til they start to recharge, in case i don't want to reduce recharge delay with a mod for the cost of having even lower hp or what ever???

this makes a frame that was hard to master even less attractive. and meanwhile saryn is still killing complete maps with one move?

just make an exception and let her keep the 1 sec recharge delay. or show me how you survive lvl 100+ enemies without constantly having to switch to operator void mode to get shields back up because for 1 full second your tiny hp bar is completely unprotected while your 5k shields can be ripped down in a matter of seconds. this is neither challenging nor fun.

Edited March 5, 2020 by whit3sh4d0w86

[Ketec]

This only screws all the slow fire/attack weapons with high damage while rapid fire won't even notice the gating.

The 5% bypass is way too little if you still need two shots on a slow weapon even tho it could kill the target several times over.

Add the slash nerf and you basically are down to gas or toxin rapid fire weapons.
 

Edited March 5, 2020 by Ketec

[DeathHymnal]

Since trying out the changes, is there any word about Hildryn? Now everyone has a version of her shield gate and now her passive is now literally non-existent, are we going to see a revised passive for her? Longer shield gate? Chance for insta full shield? Etc.

[SprinKah]

I...like the shield gating change, but this has literally RUINED my favorite thing to do in Warframe. That is going to the SImulacrum and spawning Grineer and Corpus units to fight each other.

Before this change, the fights were quite balanced because Corpus shield doesn't recharge constantly. Now it's so one-sided it kinda hurts because the Grineer units can't even bypass the Corpus shield to reach their health, and now tat Slash doesn't affect health with Shield anymore.

I know this isn't what Warframe is really about but I've played this game for 3k5 hours now, and combat has become quite stale for me, so I turned to that, it has kept me in the game for this long because of the whole Grineer vs Corpus thing. I would spend hours just watching them shoot each other in a balanced fight in Simulacrum and see who will come on top. Now it's so one-side towards the Corpus there's nothing fun about it anymore. 

Of course I do other things but just shooting mobs after mobs after mobs in missions ain't really that fulfilling anymore. 

I wish there's someway that you guys can KEEP this Shield gating change but also make it so that the....Grineer vs Corpus simulacrum fights are well...balanced.

Perhaps change some aspects of Corpus's shield gating and ONLY them, remove the whole CONSTANTLY RECHARGING SHIELD and just make it so that once their shield breaks, they have a small period of invulnerability like...1 second, or even 0.5 second.

I really really think you guys should just remove the whole shield constantly recharging for them because tbh, it doesn't really do much for them because. Again, I think you guys should just add a small period of invulnerability for them after shield's gone. They can still recharge shield but maybe, NOT instantly. 

I know this all sounds rather weird but honestly, despite the fact that shield gating is a good thing, it has rather...ruined the game a bit for me. 

Edited March 5, 2020 by SprinKah

[_Kansei]

One thing about gas damage I noticed is that the toxin effect it crates dosnt bypass shields like straight toxin does. It would be nice if the toxin damage did the same thing weather being straight toxin or toxin created from gas damage

[Modus-Pwnens]

The foe changes seem like they're working basically fine.

The friend changes feel like they still don't make shields remotely useful enough relative to health. In fact, the gating is just as useful with and without shield mods - it's the same invulnerability and the same time before shields recharge and I get another gate (or, if it's not, it's so close that I can't tell the difference in the simulacrum). Why would I ever use shield mods instead of vitality (much less umbral vitality)? Even if I already have Vitality and want more survivability, I'm still never going to choose shields over Adaptation or Quick Thinking, even on the frames with the highest shield:health ratio.

Some things that would help:

1. Let health and/or energy orbs instantly recharge shields. Past the absolute earliest parts of progression, there are so many ways to recharge health, and so many of them are instantaneous (or virtually instantaneous) that the fact that shields natively recharge is barely an advantage at all. Letting a pickup bypass the recharge timer and give another gate would go a long way to making shields more useful. It could actually recharge the shields by some amount, or it could just bypass the timer, cutting short that dreadful 4 seconds, buying you another shield gate, and getting your shields recharging.
2. Make the invulnerability time of the gate relative to the size of the shield (more shield, longer invulnerability). Right now the invulnerability only really serves to prevent instant downing by rapid-fire weapons - it doesn't last nearly long enough to get to a safe place, so after it breaks you're just hoping the enemy misses due to your movement. If it scaled, then investing in shields might actually give us time to get to cover and create the playstyle described in the dev stream and workshop posts. This would also solve the problem of the gate being equally useful regardless of shield size, which presently makes modding for shield capacity largely pointless.
3. Modding for shield recharge should reduce the time before shields start to recover. Shield recharge is not a great value proposition right now. Even with a maxed recharge mod, shields come back much slower than health (via all of the healing mechanics in the game), and only after not being shot for a period of time. Massively buffing the impact of the mods seems like a bad idea, since buffing it too much would make healing unnecessary and warframes largely invincible. Also, having to leave combat to recharge shields already feels pretty bad, but having to sit there twiddling your thumbs for 4 seconds before they even start to come back feels awful. Letting shield recharge reduce the time before recovery begins would help a lot, and it would mean that you could mod your way to getting shield gates more frequently, which would be an actual benefit to building for shields over health.

Edited March 5, 2020 by Modus-Pwnens

[SprinKah]

I'm not just saying this because of the whole SImulacrum mock battle Grineer vs Corpus that I mentioned at first. This would make it so that AI NPCs would have a hard time all together against Corpus NPCS and every NPC with shield because generally, AI NPCs just don't have the same firepower we have, they don't deal in millions of damage. And the shield will just keep regenerating without end. 

I tried going to Invasion and siding with the Corpus, with Grineer having higher level, my Corpus allies just mow through them like no tomorrow simply because the Grineer NPCs cannot get through a single one of the Corpus NPCs' shield. And tbh, if you spend enough time, you don't even need to do anything, just sit still and let the CORPUS NPCs handle everything because there's no going through their shield. 

 

Plus CORPUS shield regenerates by % of their shield so at a certain level, it'd be impossible to bypass their shield, like it was tough enough in Orb Vallis fighting against Elite Terra enemies, now they're gonna constantly regenerate their shield, it's a bit broken.

Edited March 5, 2020 by SprinKah

[Twistedsparkle]

somethings weird...
sometimes the shieldgate doesnt work and I just get burst damaged anyway
might be a bug? but overall shields do feel more resilient

the default recharge rate however... shoulda been updated

[GKP_light]

At high level, it seams that the shield is still far less resistant than armor...

(and so the magnetic is still far less usefull than corosive or viral)

 

[Nasair]

After testing a lvl 110 Tech in the simulator with Saryn, was it intentional to make so strong. Even with her 4 on and her 1 doing over 2K damage their shields regen so fast they almost never take health damage.

[SenorClipClop]

Hildryn?

[SprinKah]

1 minute ago, Nasair said:

After testing a lvl 110 Tech in the simulator with Saryn, was it intentional to make so strong. Even with her 4 on and her 1 doing over 2K damage their shields regen so fast they almost never take health damage.

^^^

I agree, please remove their constantly regenerating shield, honestly it's such a double edged sword, sometimes it feels right, sometimes it feels downright broken math. 

I'd say the stopping lethal damage with thheir shield and a small invulnerability period is enough. 

This also sorta affeects NPC interactions, Corpus just seems pretty much invincible when fought against other NPCs, especially in Invasions. 

[dodyouserious]

theres a shield gating? or my reaction time is just too slow

[Nasair]

Just now, dodyouserious said:

theres a shield gating? or my reaction time is just too slow

If you mean on enemies theirs has a bleed over so extra damage can still kill them but at high level you'll notice it.
As for your frame, yeah, don't blink.

[Thrymm]

So far I like it.

For myself, my shields where up noticeably more and prevented a large amount of big hit enemies(bombards and various sniper enemies, most notably) from diving straight into chunks of my health.  As I did all of my initial play with Frost, I think most of this came from the gating giving me time to toss up a globe.

I'm going to have a look at actual, shield specific frames next, but that was the one notable thing I saw with Frost---my shields served much more of a purpose, but I could find little if any reason to actually adjust my build to have more of them.  The combination of damage reduction and the gate allowed me ample opportunity to remove myself from enemy fire long enough to regenerate some shielding without taking significant health damage, and that was with only 525 shields.

On enemies, it was noticeable that an initial AE didn't simply wipe the corrupted corpus off the map, leaving only grineer.  They still died pretty readily to the ground effects such as nightwatch napalm, however, which seemed right.  I didn't run any corpus specific missions, so the only experience with it so far was the corrupted, but it did seem to, if only briefly, at least allow the corpus to get a shot off.

[P._I._Staker]

Please slow down shield regen for high level corpus you can't easily kill in one hit with headshot.

Edited March 5, 2020 by Reaper76OTP

[LoxeBi]

Not as bad as I first thought. Thought it was crazy powerful, but it works well. Getting similar results with the same weapon killing grineer bombards and corpus techs.

[jaskor]

Profit taker gets a little bit of shields back after 1st phase after this update

[Galuf]

tl;dr; I don't think that full damage immunity is a good design choice as it can be abused and damage immunity is bad overall. I fear for newer or not minmaxed players against high level corpus.

This is a two way mechanic, the effect on players and effect on ennemies has to be seriously nuanced. Imho this mechanic has to be refined but it is a step in the right direction so it has to stay but keep beeing improved seriously. Survivability is a core element of gameplay and shield is on top of the health bar, so yeah it's a core component of the game and in the meantime shields suffered from natural power creep since more than 5 years. 😄

I don't think that it should stay this current form, it feels more like joker immunity absorb for you and some clear speed annoyance against shielded ennemies. Also there is a balance issue against heavy gunners imho.

My suggestion would be on warframe to actually nerf the mechanic and giving ways for it to be reliable involving opportunity cost(in terms of mods):

- Reduce the health damage a lot(like 80 to 90%) instead of negating it to mitigate the value gained by players that will try and use it

- Incentivise mechanics that regen shields regularily for you and your teamates(there are some)

My suggestions on ennemies:

- Heavy Gunners are to be looked closely as these are the only starchart non void non corpus shielded ennemies. I have no opinion on their balance right now tho, I would have checked them before releasing the update and that's it.

- On corpus it is another story. Corpus was definitely not as weak as some people may imply. Some of them scale extremly well damage wise and in Fortuna there is a decent variety of annoying ones. Gas was already a very solid option against corpus and it will be even more pronouced right now. I don't know how low geared players will deal with them and I'm not sure if shield gating will introduce fun elements either when you had already things to deal with actively most of the time.