Shield Mechanics

[Frenrihr89]

Dear tenno's what do u think about the shields in the the game?

Let me to explain my point:

Right now the shield mechanic works pretty well when you are playing against low level enemies, no problem at all but when you go to fight against the higher ones the shield start to become a little irrelevant vs the HP, why? Becouse 1 bullet can erase your shield.. In the case of the HP you have your armor to add a reduction in the damage that you can take directly into it, but you dont have the same with your shield, currently we have another countermesures to help the shield a little, we have overshields,fast deflection kind of mods but still.. always its gonna be better to raise your hp and armor if you want to go to fight the big guys..

So what do u think? Should the shields have some love at some point??

[GreyEnneract]

The only way they would compare to armor is if shields received some sort of damage reduction.

[EmptyDevil]

Shield gates for players would be nice.

[taiiat]

this argument is a complete fallacy. just as it is every time someone states it.

only a fraction of Warframes have usable Armor - and it just increases the Effective Health your... Health has, it's not some magical voodoo force.

 

Shields and Health both matter for survivability.

Shields protect you from most of the potential Damage that you might take in Warframe. use them like Shields, don't try to use Shields like a wall.

the only time i can see 'only Health matters' is if you're using Winds of Purity as a primary Weapon, or you're a Trinity.

 

 

frankly, what's just really missing are Mods that reduce the Shield Recharge Delay in addition to the Recharge Speed ones we have.

and then probably redo the stats on Fortitude and replace the Knockdown Resist with Shield Recharge Delay.

[AdunSaveMe]

What we need is shield gating, so if we have 500 shields, 500 health and take a single shot that deals 1000 damage, the shield breaks but health is untouched until the next shot. It's a simple mechanic that means you don't get instakilled in one shot and it makes shields more than just recharging hp.

[321agemo]

Im against shield gating as a new mechanic. This will make corpus quite OP and push more people away from using high powered single shot weapons like bows and sniper rifle.

Not to mention the guardian eximus and shield osprey they have that would constantly regenerate the shields. It would also make mag's infinite scale and arguably best skill shield polarize significantly worse.

Edit: honestly shields are fine. They regenerate and act like a buffer.

Using Adun example, you take 1000 damage. Assuming you survive the hit, that 500 shield would regenerate meaning you can take 500 dmg w/o touching health.

If you had a pure 1000 health, you can't take another 500 because its already damaged your non regenerating health.

^ example does not include rejuvenation, health pads, healing mods & skill of course.

Edited December 14, 2015 by 321agemo

[GreyEnneract]

this argument is a complete fallacy. just as it is every time someone states it.

only a fraction of Warframes have usable Armor - and it just increases the Effective Health your... Health has, it's not some magical voodoo force.

 

Shields and Health both matter for survivability.

Shields protect you from most of the potential Damage that you might take in Warframe. use them like Shields, don't try to use Shields like a wall.

the only time i can see 'only Health matters' is if you're using Winds of Purity as a primary Weapon, or you're a Trinity.

 

 

frankly, what's just really missing are Mods that reduce the Shield Recharge Delay in addition to the Recharge Speed ones we have.

and then probably redo the stats on Fortitude and replace the Knockdown Resist with Shield Recharge Delay.

I'd like to know exactly what type of fallacy you think you're reading, as people often use the word having no idea what they're talking about.

Shields need more scaling. Period. Shield scaling compared to Armor for enemies is absolutely ridiculous.

As for frames, both shield and armor scaling are in a bad spot. Since enemy damage outscales almost all frames.

Armor scaling is currently too good for enemies, and not good enough for Warframes. While shield scaling is not good enough on both sides.

Corpus are a joke compared to Grineer, and only two frames can utilize armor when it actually matters.

Im against shield gating as a new mechanic. This will make corpus quite OP and push more people away from using high powered single shot weapons like bows and sniper rifle.

Not to mention the guardian eximus and shield osprey they have that would constantly regenerate the shields. It would also make mag's infinite scale and arguably best skill shield polarize significantly worse.

If magnetic damage bypassed the gate, would you still be against it?

[Jakcal]

Make the rate of regen faster. 15/s + 5% is really slow, make it start as 10 but double every second.

That way if you have 600 shields instead of taking 13-14 seconds to fully recharge, it'll only take less than 6 seconds. Increase the delay to compensate.

IMO a shield gate is more important but I felt like throwing that out there.

[FATEdPondera]

Truth be told, I've fallen away from shields. They're utterly and completely pointless to mod for against most enemies for a couple of reasons. First of all, even if you don't put a single mod to fortify them, shields are always going to be there for you. A tiny little buffer to absorb some small arms fire in case you mess up on that dodge.

 

Secondly, Shields can be bypassed by slashing damage (from the grineer) and poison (from the infested). Even the Corpus have a few means of dealing with shield heavy Tenno, so that is all 3 factions of the game that have an answer for shield builds. You have a shallow health pool, you're gonna have a bad time.

 

Third, armor values. A good chunk of Tenno have armor in the 50-65 region. That is damage reduction between 14.29-17.81% without a single mod helping. That means, if you have a health pool of 935, you have an effective health of 1101.52. Shields have no armor value, no active mititation, nothing. Their only saving grace is that they regenerate.

[321agemo]

If magnetic damage bypassed the gate, would you still be against it?

I want to say no but at the same time magnetic damage needs a buff. Its usefulness is so limited to only a portion of a specific enemy type health.

I think i rather have an impact proc allows it to bypass the gate, while magnetic disables eximus auras/abilities.

I need to give this more thought before i make up my mind about that though.

[Azlen]

I agree that shields definitely don't scale into late game well, but honestly I think that is okay. Design wise, and mod wise, I think they WERE intended to be an alternative survivability to health, even if they fall short of this purpose. I still think that's alright though.

 

They feel more like an early-mid game invincible wall, if playing correctly. They don't scale well, but that doesn't make them bad.

 

And here is the pretty unique piece I'd like to bring to the table. With the shield mods (Redirection, Vigor, Fast Deflection and Fortitude) your shields come back pretty quick, and you usually have a pool in the 1000+ range, frame depending.

 

Now all that seems like a lot for 'okay' survivability. But the kicker I think is the sentinel mod that restores your shields instantly (don't know the specific name, Guardian I think?) to full. While all 4 of the mods above aren't necessary for this to function (really only redirection is), that single sentinel mod makes shields the most viable (in comparison to other shield-favoring mods, not to health) cost vs. effectiveness The point of shields is that, given proper positioning and play, you take no health damage. You only wait for them to recover. That sentinel mod, on the short cooldown that it is, makes it all possible.

Just my 2cents

~Az

Edited December 14, 2015 by Azlen

[xFrostKnightx]

You can't really buff shields without nerfing them at the same time. Shields have an eHP equal to health, so adding damage resist would be pointless and make shields better than health because they regenerate. (Also not considering Enemies with shields would logically also get this "buff")

Release a mod that removes/shortens the regeneration delay at the cost of shield regeneration speed.  This gives the buff you want while giving it a chance to be balanced and make shield Regen mods relevant at the same time.
 

 

 

Make the rate of regen faster. 15/s + 5% is really slow, make it start as 10 but double every second.
That way if you have 600 shields instead of taking 13-14 seconds to fully recharge, it'll only take less than 6 seconds. Increase the delay to compensate.
IMO a shield gate is more important but I felt like throwing that out there.

If it doubled each tick, it would be broken and make shield regen mods useless.  Also this dosn't address the issue OP mentioned that shields don't start regenerating fast enough/ stop when shot, making Shield's less useful at higher levels when they can be 1-2 shot destroyed with a 1k shield.
A bigger delay before recharging only makes OP's issue worse.

We need a mod that will make the delay shorter or completely remove delay and regen even when shot at the cost of regen speed (corrupt mod).

Edited December 14, 2015 by xFrostKnightx

[Defendor]

The only problem with shield is the overabundance of various "screw shields" mechanics in the game. Toxin and Slash bypass your shields. Ice halves them. Nightmare mode removes them. All of these combined lead to a situation where you're forced to use some health mods even on shield frames like Mag, if you don't want to die to two unlucky slash procs.

 

Nightmare's no shields mode and ice simply have to go. I don't know why they're there in the first place. The former is stops many frames from being viable in NM, the second is just really dumb and punishes shield frames for no reason. Shields should also prevent or at least weaken slash and toxin procs, so that going into a mission with something like 225 health wouldn't be suicide.

[Frenrihr89]

this argument is a complete fallacy. just as it is every time someone states it.

only a fraction of Warframes have usable Armor - and it just increases the Effective Health your... Health has, it's not some magical voodoo force.

 

Shields and Health both matter for survivability.

Shields protect you from most of the potential Damage that you might take in Warframe. use them like Shields, don't try to use Shields like a wall.

the only time i can see 'only Health matters' is if you're using Winds of Purity as a primary Weapon, or you're a Trinity.

 

 

frankly, what's just really missing are Mods that reduce the Shield Recharge Delay in addition to the Recharge Speed ones we have.

and then probably redo the stats on Fortitude and replace the Knockdown Resist with Shield Recharge Delay.

Thank you all for your replies.

*ofcourse i'm aware of the concept of effective health.. Still finding the hp more important than shields, be careful calling other people monkeys, if you don't know if they study or not the mechanics of the game....

** its not that simple as some people says: dude if you take a shot with 1000 dmg and you currently have 600\600, then you have 200 hp left after the shot...doesnt work like that.

And you are right, we are missing mods that could help with the recharge delay.. Still you are going lose all your shields with 1-2 shots from high level enemies so its not like that kind of mod would resolve the problem.

Also i think the shields should work only against projectiles, not against melee like the currently system, if they buff the shields adding some kind of damage reduction they should also remove the protection of the shields against melee, because that would be OP..

[Jakcal]

If it doubled each tick, it would be broken and make shield regen mods useless. Also this dosn't address the issue OP mentioned that shields don't start regenerating fast enough/ stop when shot, making Shield's less useful at higher levels when they can be 1-2 shot destroyed with a 1k shield.

A bigger delay before recharging only makes OP's issue worse.

We need a mod that will make the delay shorter or completely remove delay and regen even when shot at the cost of regen speed (corrupt mod).

Honestly there's no problem in the delay for me. You have to take cover in order to regenerate shields otherwise it'll just stop regenerating anyway. I was thinking maybe a 5 second delay.

Just removing the delay won't make it regenerate anywhere near as fast. It'll still take 13-14 seconds to regenerate.

It wouldn't be broken because it still only takes a few shots to destroy it, but at least it's actually there to soak up the damage.

Shield regen mods are already useless, but this way you can see a huge difference.

Whatever though, not like DE will ever change it.

[GnosticCat]

The only problem with shield is the overabundance of various "screw shields" mechanics in the game. Toxin and Slash bypass your shields. Ice halves them. Nightmare mode removes them. All of these combined lead to a situation where you're forced to use some health mods even on shield frames like Mag, if you don't want to die to two unlucky slash procs.

 

Nightmare's no shields mode and ice simply have to go. I don't know why they're there in the first place. The former is stops many frames from being viable in NM, the second is just really dumb and punishes shield frames for no reason. Shields should also prevent or at least weaken slash and toxin procs, so that going into a mission with something like 225 health wouldn't be suicide.

So when you run with glass cannon you don't want to have any risk from that?

[Defendor]

So when you run with glass cannon you don't want to have any risk from that?

A Mag with 2310 shield shouldn't be a glass cannon.

[GnosticCat]

A Mag with 2310 shield shouldn't be a glass cannon.

Hmm, after thinking about a bit I do agree, yes it shoudn't be glass cannon, just saw that 225 health and that was reaction. Slash procs should not go trough - you don't take damage so why bleed? Toxin not so sure.

But not agreeing on nightmare part, it is quite fun to run even with shield frames due to added challenge. Also all frames should not be equaly good at all situations in my opinion, sometimes choosing best frame for job should be considered.

[Lost_Cartographer]

A Mag with 2310 shield shouldn't be a glass cannon.

A Mag with 2310 shield is effectively immortal against most content without shield bypassing damage types.  In fact, these types were partially inspired by the fact that Tenno would only ever stack shield mods as a defensive measure on all but maybe one frame (Valkyr.)  Kind of a standard in the developer playbook to see what people are doing with your systems and countering them to shake up the status quo.  Same thing happened with power spam and the introduction of nullifiers.

[ArkNeither]

I feel like, before the advent of Melee 2.0, the relationship between Shields and Health was similar to Shields and Health from the Halo games. You did basic combat with Shields up, but when you began taking Health damage, that was the signal to get the hell out and find cover (or end the fight immediately). That sorta applied to Warframe as well, when you began taking Health damage that was time to run and hide.

 

With Melee 2.0, blocking, Life Strike, and all the viable tanking/brawler/melee Frames like Excalibur, Valkyr, Chroma, Atlas, and Ash, and mods like Quick Thinking, Rage, and even Primed Flow... tanking hits and simply regenerating the pain has sort of become the way to go, but because only Health can be instantly regained with something like Life Strike (unless you've got things like Blessing or Shield Polarity), Shields and building for Shields has gone out the window.

 

When you jump into a thick fight with your melee weapon, your Shields are gone like instantly, and the rest of the fight is just you and your Health bar constantly bouncing between full and not full.

[Defendor]

A Mag with 2310 shield is effectively immortal against most content without shield bypassing damage types. 

Without health mods she only has 2575 EHP, which is a very good amount, but far from immortality. Fits the frame with one of the game's highest shield values and access to overshields, which she still has to spend energy and a mod slot on.

 

In fact, these types were partially inspired by the fact that Tenno would only ever stack shield mods as a defensive measure on all but maybe one frame (Valkyr.)  Kind of a standard in the developer playbook to see what people are doing with your systems and countering them to shake up the status quo.  Same thing happened with power spam and the introduction of nullifiers.

Sure, it's standard, but DE doesn't do it well. Nulls are the designed badly, too. The new modular enemies are what they should've been like.

[Elenortirie]

The only way they would compare to armor is if shields received some sort of damage reduction.

 

also - cryocore malfunction, no shields nightmare mode

first one halfens your survivability if you are built for shields - second one eliminates it at all

and then does health/armor have something even remotely similar? nope

so either we get rng-based "half the armor" environment in mission and "no armor" nightmare mode or DE should get rid of cryocore malfucntion and no shields mode....

 

Also i think the shields should work only against projectiles, not against melee like the currently system, if they buff the shields adding some kind of damage reduction they should also remove the protection of the shields against melee, because that would be OP..

 

that would destroy my melee mag build :P

[GnosticCat]

also - cryocore malfunction, no shields nightmare mode

first one halfens your survivability if you are built for shields - second one eliminates it at all

and then does health/armor have something even remotely similar? nope

so either we get rng-based "half the armor" environment in mission and "no armor" nightmare mode or DE should get rid of cryocore malfucntion and no shields mode....

Leaking pipes sprays armor corroding mist for armor reduction? Corrosive atmosphere environment for armor removal?

 

Doesn't new raid include some sort of armor removal?

Edited December 14, 2015 by icewindlord

[Frenrihr89]

also - cryocore malfunction, no shields nightmare mode

first one halfens your survivability if you are built for shields - second one eliminates it at all

and then does health/armor have something even remotely similar? nope

so either we get rng-based "half the armor" environment in mission and "no armor" nightmare mode or DE should get rid of cryocore malfucntion and no shields mode....

 

 

that would destroy my melee mag build :P

but seems fair, right..

Edited December 14, 2015 by Frenrihr89

[Sorkheff]

I'd like to see a series of mods that change the concept of the shield you're using. Each being a 5 rank mod that increases the shields resistance value to the group of damage types listed below by 10%/rank. Each mod would also grant 7.5% shield recharge per rank.

 

Energy Shield: Cold, Heat, Electricity, Magnetic.

Kinetic Shield: Impact, Puncture, Slash, Blast.

Environmental Shield: Gas, Viral, Radiation, Corrosive.

 

And one more:

Reactive Shielding: Allows your shields to continue to regenerate by 10% of your maximum recharge rate per rank. 3-5 rank mod.

 

I'm for giving the shield more durability without giving it a direct armor or hardness value. But even though I think these ideas would be particularly fun, I'm not sure they would really give shields the ability to tank like Armor (and I'm not sure that should be the point of shields).

 

I'm not for shield gating because that opens a massive can of worms in general and would really penalize low magazine weapons.