Suggestion: Add a mod to allow a percentage of armor to add damage reduction to shields. For enemies, add a small amount of base armor to all shielded enemies and allow a percentage to affect shields.

[SatireVer]

I'm aware that shield gating already makes some frames or builds extremely tanky by intermittent invincibility, but this actually disincentivises building shields, leading to even equipping a dragon key to reduce max shields. While I think this is an interesting build-around that should remain viable, it does nothing to address that the actual shields themselves are underpowered on most frames without a global damage reduction ability (ie Baruuk).

I think introducing a mod that allows a % (say 50% at max rank) of armor to affect shields will allow for interesting synergy and open up new build possibilities, especially with the helminth system giving new options to interact with shields (pillage, condemn, electric elemental ward) and armor (defy, ice elemental ward, warcry). It will also again make many mods a potentially defensive choice again (redirection, fast deflection). The fact that all these build choices require mod slot trade-offs should (numbers adjusting) make this not overpowered, as the change is not automatic for all frames.

I would certainly be excited to re-explore so many potential builds with this single mod addition.

The other observed issue is that shields scale very poorly with high enemy level and sortie-type modifiers, leading to armoured enemies/factions being exponentially tougher, especially apparent on steel path. Corpus are like butter, and grineer/armoured corrupted are the only damage gatekeeper that matters. This does not feel great, and limits build diversity for weapons. Due to the way armor scales, even adding a small armor value to shielded enemies and a % to affect shields will make corpus scale much closer to grineer.

By making shields tougher, this also indirectly significantly buffs toxin and magnetic, making it much more competitive with corrosive, viral and heat on shields. This would mean players would have to make a real choice on weapon modding, either with different elemental loadouts per faction, or having different status covered on the three weapons.

[TheLexiConArtist]

You almost had me until you said that enemies should all have armour (and have it affect their own absurd shields) too.

 

Sponge Path is already an indefensible chore unless you obligatorily remove (Shattering Impact/abilities) or bypass (Slash procs) the armour of units that have it.

[SatireVer]

Well if they've already made grineer into sponges it seems inconsistent to leave corpus as unabsorbant tissues... 

[Drasiel]

13 minutes ago, SatireVer said:

Well if they've already made grineer into sponges it seems inconsistent to leave corpus as unabsorbant tissues... 

I think a lot of people think the issue is on the grineer end not the corpus end of that equation. Especially since de just rebalanced armour and corrosive to address grineer overtankiness prior to steel path then pretty much undid that effort on steel path due to the armour buffs. 

[SatireVer]

Fair enough. This change would allow a lower health/armor/shield multiplier so grineer can be less tanky and corpus more in comparison though.