Why do people use health mods over sheild mods?

[(XBOX)TwitchyTwigger]

i see everyone use health mods on everything! even on frames with 65 armor! am i missing something?

[[DE]Momaw]

I'm just going to be the total rebel here, and say that a lot of people are silly. Prelude:  Obviously none of this applies to frames that are designed and capable of fighting with their health bar, like Valkyr, Inaros, and Chroma.

Can you get killed by slash and toxin status through your shields?  Yes you can. Toxin status only comes from Infested. Toxic ancients only do their toxic attack if you try to engage them in melee or spoon with them, and they do so much toxin damage that at higher levels they'll kill you whether you have vitality or not (warframes have a built in weakness to toxin damage).  Mutalist ospreys leave static clouds that you can just avoid. And Slash status...  while it's true that occasionally you will pick up a very nasty Slash that does a hundred damage per second, such hits are rare. Most slash procs only chip your health, and chip damage is easy to recover from. Given that the magnitude of a Slash scales based on the damage of the hit that caused it, if you don't have decent shields you're probably not going to be happy about the initial thousand-damage hit that caused the lethal Slash in the first place (and it ignores all that much-praised armor rating too).  Plus don't forget that performing a Roll maneuver makes you 75% resistant to damage, and if a DOT tick happens mid-roll, it it also mitigated.

Can you restore health using life strike? Yes you can. It costs energy and requires you to wade into combat to do it. Your shields come back, for free, in a few seconds, while you take cover.

Isn't your health bar protected by armor? Yes it is. However half the frames in the game don't have a useful amount of armor, just as half of them don't have a useful amount of shields. And unless you have a base armor rating of at least 300, having "armor" won't actually influence the way you play, where mobility and abilities are your primary survival traits.  Your shield bar is protected by Guardian. While it's try that you can be one-shotted from full shields even with Redirection which negates Guardian's chance to trigger, chances are at that point that the enemy can one-shot you even if you had Vitality instead.

Just my views (shrug)

[Cook-EN-]

Shields are a secondary need. Health mods are what keep you alive, because they are the primary focus of survival.

[Stormdragon]

Because shields won't protect you from slash or toxin procs and are way easier to shred than health.

[RagingGrizzly]

Because shields are usually lackluster in their defensive capabilities.

[Aurea_Hiigara]

As said above. Having a 2k shield isn't going to save your 300 HP if a toxin cloud spawns on top of you.

[(XBOX)TwitchyTwigger]

Just now, Cook-EN- said:

Shields are a secondary need. Health mods are what keep you alive, because they are the primary focus of survival.

But why? sheilds recharge, health doesn't.

 

[AdunSaveMe]

Shields aren't as useful. They might regenerate but they have nothing like armour.

I use shield mods on low health frames like mag. On anything else, it's worthless. Even on mag it's iffy.

[(XBOX)TwitchyTwigger]

Okay, i get it now. thank you warframe community!

[Drufo]

At the same value, health is stronger because of armor

[direcyphre]

2 minutes ago, (XB1)TwitchyTwigger said:

But why? sheilds recharge, health doesn't.

 

Procs bypass shields. Every toxic infested would kill you in an instant if you walked past them.

[StolenLife]

Shields can be destroyed by one shot (magnetic damage), Armor is useless (High level inflict high damage).

But what about health - You can get energy from damage (Rage mod), You become more survivable (Poison, slash damage)

[Trichouette]

3 minutes ago, (XB1)TwitchyTwigger said:

But why? sheilds recharge, health doesn't.

 

Because life strike exist.

And because as long as shield gating doesn't exist, shield is just a 0 armor health bar that replenish itself.

At high level you can have 300 or 2k shield it's the same, a bullet or two get rid of it. While having health and armor is way more useful.

[SaurusRex]

1 minute ago, (XB1)TwitchyTwigger said:

But why? sheilds recharge, health doesn't.

 

Once you get further into the game, there are many ways to get health back. Multiple warframes have abilities that can heal, various syndicate weapons restore health on activation, there's a sentinel mod, life strike on melee weapons, life leech on the furis, arcane enhancements, and possibly others I'm forgetting. On the other hand, there's very few that will reliably recharge your shields, and shields will not save you from toxic or slash procs.

[RawGritz]

Many other games work so that once shield are gone then health pool is vulnerable.  Warframe does not work like that. As mentioned above there are several damage types that bypass shields and go right to attacking your health. 

Also many people use Rage on their builds, which grants special ability energy upon damage to health. Keeping low shields means you're more readily getting special ability energy benefit from taking damage to your stocky health pool.

Always good to have high health pools. This is part of why Inaros is so popular.

Edited November 17, 2016 by RawGritz

[MystMan]

Depends on your playstyle.

I rely on shields instead of health and I do just fine in sorties and other high level content. My playstyle involves not getting hit a lot in the first place and/or subduing the enemy from attacking.
I survive in infested missions avoiding all sources of poison, which there are many. Toxic enemies are my priority kills, remove them the moment I see them and no worries about toxin anymore.
Slash proc takes little damage, nothing Medi-Vac or health orbs from crates can't fix. The very rare times I get severe high slash proc, I react fast enough to drop a health restore.
Also, I never use Quick Thinking. I see everybody swear by this mod yet I do just fine without it. I simply do not expose myself to dozens of enemies to take so much damage that it kills me.

This is probably because all my weapons have a bunch of formas on them that allows me to kill the enemy quicker than they can kill me.

[Tizodd]

29 minutes ago, -----LegioN----- said:

Because shields won't protect you from slash or toxin procs and are way easier to shred than health.

Pretty much this^

Also, I build many of my frames with a [Rage],[Quick Thinking],[Primed Flow] combo.  So more health is quite literally more survivability with this combo.

[(PSN)Magician_NG]

Some of us use neither and just use quick thinking.

I don't bother with flow or rage either because QT is enough for most of the content in the game.

Edited November 17, 2016 by (PS4)Magician_NG

[(PSN)CoolD2108]

Health:

*Scales off armor and isn't static on 5 armor like shields

*is refillable, by mods which don't occupy frame slots, abilitys and orbs. Shields in contrary are only refillable by a very few abilitys and need to refill themselfes otherwise

 

Summed up: Health is stronger and easyer to manage...

 

[(PSN)joshw1400]

1 hour ago, (XB1)TwitchyTwigger said:

i see everyone use health mods on everything! even on frames with 65 armor! am i missing something?

You realize that's like saying putting shields on Banshee. 

[(PSN)Darth-Escar]

Health is usually better for reasons already stated. (More protection, slash and toxin, regeneration, blah blah blah.) I'd usually recommend boosting health, but there are cases where I think shields shine. Most commonly, in situations where you wouldn't take much damage. Warframes I have such builds for are Limbo, Titania, and Nova Prime. There are other great uses for shields too, like using a Rakta Dark Dagger, especially with Oberon.

[(XBOX)TwitchyTwigger]

1 hour ago, (PS4)joshw1400 said:

You realize that's like saying putting shields on Banshee. 

banshee has 15 armor

[(PSN)joshw1400]

1 hour ago, (XB1)TwitchyTwigger said:

banshee has 15 armor

That's proving my point. Why would you put shields on her when she has 15 armor. You're increasing your chance of dying by using shields instead of health.

[Johldemort]

DE have talked about 'shield gating' which will make shields just as good as hp in the future (probably won't save you from that toxin though)