Shields absorb every Damage but  Toxin.

Shields regenerate automatically. They can also be replenished with Abilities and items like Health Orbs. Stack Shields to create Overshields, which offer additional protection.

> When Shields break, become invulnerable for |AMOUNT| seconds. Increase Max Shields to increase the invulnerability duration.

> Shield Recharge Delay: |AMOUNT| seconds

> Shield Recharge: |AMOUNT|% per second

Edit

Gauss's Passive

Passively gains bonus shield recharge rate and shield recharge delay reduction for every point of battery stored in his gauge, up to a maximum of 120% for recharge rate and 80% for recharge delay when the battery is full.

Hotfix 36.0.2 (2024-06-19)

• Player Necramech changes:
  • Player Necramech’s Shields now have a 50% Damage Reduction.
  • Also fixed Warframe and the Railjack Shields missing their intended 50% Damage Reduction!
  • Player Necramechs have also had their weaknesses/resistances standardized to match Tenno Health.

Update 36.0 (2024-06-18)

Shield Adjustments

Important note: We have not changed player Shields. This only applies to enemy Shields!

The Grineer are tankier by design, but the Corpus try to make the difference through their Shields. However, Corpus Effective Hit Points (EHP) are significantly lower, making them often trivial to deal with by comparison. Our goal is to reduce the discrepancy between Grineer and Corpus time-to-kill (TTK) by making Corpus Shields a bit more challenging and interesting to fight.

Changes to Enemy Shields:

• Shields now scale more quickly starting at level 80. This means stronger Shields than before as players fight higher-leveled Shielded enemies.
• Shield Recharge Delay is now unified across all enemy types.
• Shield Recharge Delay now has a minimum and maximum length depending on how much damage has been dealt to enemy Shields.
  • The more damage dealt, the slower enemy Shields will begin recharging, so if you can’t outpace enemy Shields right away, you can chip their Recharge Delay down within a maximum and a minimum.
    • For example, if enemy Shields break at any point, it automatically acts as if 200% damage (which becomes the maximum delay) has been inflicted on those Shields. However, if an enemy absorbs 99% damage (so 1% of their shields left), their accumulated damage taken now sets their Recharge Delay in the middle of their respective minimum and maximum delays. Should they Recharge and you deal another 99% damage to their Shields, they’ll have absorbed 198% damage, taking them to the maximum Recharge delay of what that scaled enemy can have.
• Shield Recharge Rate scales with enemy level, recharging at a faster rate for higher-leveled enemies.
• Shield Recharge Rate will also accelerate while Shields are actively Recharging.
• Shield Recharge Acceleration Rate’s base multiplier greatly increases after level 80, resulting in faster Recharge rates at higher levels.
• Steel Path Shields are now multiplied by 2.5x, in place of the previous 6.25x. Steel Path Shields were doubly-applying the multiplier unintentionally.

Update 34.0 (2023-10-18)

Warframe Shield Changes

There are many avenues for Tenno to approach Warframe survivability. Usually, it’s through increasing Health and Armor values, or making use of damage resistance features of certain Mods or Abilities, etc. For Shields, however, there is an incentive to do the opposite: the meta prior to this update encouraged players to reduce Shield values as much as possible to make use of Shield Gating mechanics.

As Developers, we’re stuck in a strange position. On one hand, we see player ingenuity and creative ways of engaging with mechanics, but on the other, we see proof that Shields are not offering the same value to players as other survivability tools - to the point where you are rewarded for having the lowest Shield stat possible.

We have changed this so that Tenno are incentivized to increase their Shield stat instead of reducing it. To do so, we have approached this challenge in two key ways:

Firstly - we’ve buffed Tenno Shields overall!
Previously: Tenno Shields offered a 25% resistance to all damage types.
Now: Tenno Shields will offer a 50% resistance to all damage types.

Secondly - we’ve reworked Shield Gating!
Shield Gating was added to the game back in 2020 with Update 27.2.0 as a way to prevent one-shots, especially at higher-level content. We feel that this mechanic accomplished that goal, but the implementation of it had an unintended side-effect: players were rewarded for having the smallest Shield stat and fastest Shield Recharge stat to make use of the Full Shield Break mechanic.

As mentioned above, our intention is to offer players more benefits for having larger Shield values, so Shield Gating has been reworked. The core mechanic is staying: when you lose all Shields, you gain a period of invulnerability. What has changed is how this period of invulnerability scales with the amount of Shields you have.

The changes outlined below have been made with that vision in mind:

Part 1 - Shield Gate Duration will scale with the amount of Shields you had upon Shield Break.

Previously: Full Shields upon Shield break offered a 1.3-second window of invulnerability.

Now, depending on your Modded values, this window could be anywhere from 0.33 seconds (minimum duration) to 2.5 seconds (capped at 1150 Shields). To receive the original 1.3-second Shield Gate, players will now need around 325 Shields upon Shield Break.

You can see a full overview of the Gate Duration vs. Shields Depleted in the graph below:

Part 2 - Partially Depleted Shields do not have a separate Shield Gate Duration.

Previously, shield breaks on Shields that were not fully regenerated offered 0.33 seconds of Shield Gating.

Now, Partially Depleted Shields are treated with the same scaling values outlined above. For example, if you had a max Shield value of 1200, but your Shields were broken with only 350 available, you would receive ~1.3 seconds of Shield Gating!

With these changes, the more Shields you have and the faster they regenerate, the more you’ll get out of the Shield Gating system!

Part 3 - We’ve added a new Corrupted Mod: Catalyzing Shields
With the changes to Shield Gating, we still wanted to offer players different ways to interact with this system without always having to Mod for the most Shields possible. To accomplish this, we have introduced a new Corrupted Mod: Catalyzing Shields.

This Mod reduces your maximum Shields by 80% but also changes how Shield Gating Scaling works for your Warframe with a guaranteed 1.33 seconds of Shield Gating upon full Shield depletion. With this Mod equipped, Shield Gating duration scales from 0.33 to 1.33 based on your maximum Shield values, regardless of what they are.

For example, if my maximum Shields are 100 with Catalyzing Shields equipped, I would expect the following Shield Gating durations:

• 100 Shields at Shield Break: 1.33s of Shield Gating
• 75 Shields at Shield Break: 1.0s of Shield Gating
• 50 Shields at Shield Break: 0.67s of Shield Gating
• 25 Shields at Shield Break: 0.34s of Shield Gating
• 10 Shields at Shield Break: 0.33s of Shield Gating
  • As a reminder, 0.33s is the absolute minimum duration for Shield Gating!

How to acquire Catalyzing Shields:
Since this is a new Corrupted Mod, it is obtainable via Orokin Vaults on Deimos.

An Alert for the Catalyzing Shields Mod is now will be available in the near future to give players faster access to this Mod to test in their builds. We will share start/end dates for that Alert soon!
An Alert for the Catalyzing Shields Mod is now live!

Part 4 - Decaying Dragon Keys have been updated to debuff both Shields and Shield Gating.
With revised Shield Gating, we felt it was important to update Decaying Dragon Keys as well. These Gear items were previously used to lower the threshold needed for Full Shield Breaks with Shield Gating, and while we loved to see players finding unique interactions between various mechanics, Dragon Keys are intended to increase difficulty when equipped.

With that intention in mind, Decaying Dragon Keys now cap player Shield Gates to 0.33s maximum.

Part 5 - A few other details to cover!

• Hildryn’s Passive has been buffed from 3s Shield Gating Duration to 3.5s Shield Gating Duration!
• Updated Grenade Fan’s description to better communicate how Shield Satellites work with Shield Gating.
  • “(HOLD) SHIELD SATELLITES - Protea reconfigures Grenades to work as overcharging shield generators, protecting her, her allies and companions. When Shields break, a Satellite is destroyed to double minimum Shield Gate invincibility time.”
• Shield Regeneration Delay Reduction is now capped at 80%. Many Mods have now been updated to offer this benefit, leading to the possibility of stacking Shield Regen to be faster than Shield Gate expiring. Now, players should have easier access to reducing the regeneration time, without risking issues with permanent invulnerability.
  • Guardian Break Shield Regeneration delay reduction has been decreased from 90% to 80% at max rank as a result. We have buffed this effect’s duration 8s to 12s at max rank to compensate!
• Updated the Shield stat on-hover description in the Upgrade Screen to describe Shield break functionality and include Shield Gate duration for your current modded max Shields.

There are many variables that will impact the overall outcome of these Shield changes with Abyss of Dagath, and we’ll be keeping a close eye on player feedback now that this is in the community’s hands.

Changes:

• Gaining Shields now provide more gradual feedback in the health bar instead of instantly changing.

Hotfix 30.5.4 (2021-07-17)

• Fixed Headshots dealing double damage if it bleeds over from Shields to Health.

Hotfix 28.0.6 (2020-06-24)

• Shield Gating now applies to Companions the same way it does to Warframes!
  • Blocks 100% of Damage for 1000ms on first break, reduced to 300ms if Shields break again without fully recharging.
• Fixed Shield-Gating not functioning properly after Reviving when becoming downed.

Update 28.0 (2020-06-11)

• Fixed Shield Gating mechanic being ignored by weapons that fire multiple projectiles at once for Clients. This resulted in some enemies shot by the Host will survive due to Shield Gating negating most of the damage, while enemies shot by the Client are not protected by the Shield Gate.

Update 27.4 (2020-05-01)

• Fixed certain boss attacks (Ropalolyst’s laser attack and Profit Taker’s missile for example) not respecting Shield Gating and killing players in one hit.

Update 27.2 (2020-03-05)

Armor and Damage Changes (Enemy)

This section will go over before and after scenarios with our enemy Armor, Health, and Shield changes. Reading this section should give you a conceptual and on-paper understanding of what we’re changing and why, but practical experiences will tell the full story here. You may need to refresh some aspects of your Builds to truly optimize your power against your enemies.

Before: Armor, Shields and Health on an Exponential Curve
After: Armor Shields and Health on an S curve

Damage-Type Changes

• Slash Status now does not bypass Shields and instead deals damage over time to Shields. Slash Status still bypasses Armor.

Player Changes

Player Shields, Health, and Armor used to be shared with all AI, so they had all the weaknesses and resistances that their AI counterparts did.

Now Players have their own unique Shield, Health, and Armor type classified as TENNO! These have all weaknesses and resistances neutralized (for now). Player Shields now reduce 25% of incoming damage. Player Shields now recharge with custom player-only logic. Shield recharge delays are based on depleted or partial depleted shields. Partially depleted shields (any amount) is a 1 second recharge delay. Full depletion is a 4 second recharge delay.

These changes to Player shields are in addition to coming Shield Gating changes, which you can read about in our Shield Gating section!

Why: Armor Scaling and enemy Damage Reduction was the nucleus for this change. For years Tenno have had the tools to deal with these things, but the tools were uniform: Use Corrosive Projection, or else. While this is a simplification, it removed the feeling of choice. With these changes, we hope players experience a feeling of variety and choice when taking on enemies. By changing the scaling for Armor, we could consistently change the scaling for all!

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!

Update 15.13 (2015-02-05)

Tenno Shields Update

Shields and HP are two critical elements to keep track of in Warframe, but when fighting enemies it can be difficult to keep track of how much damage you’ve taken in the heat of combat. This Update contains new visual and audio cues for when your Warframe takes damage in combat.

When taking damage in combat damage will sound different depending on if your shields are down or intact. Additionally shields ‘breaking’ have a new audio cue to help you better keep track of when your health is exposed to enemy fire.

Update 15.10 (2015-01-15)

Overshields have been added to Warframe! Overshields are an extra layer of protection on your existing shield that must be destroyed before your Warframe’s shields can be damaged.

• Overshields can be obtained when using Shield Restore items when you are at maximum shield capacity. Overshields cannot be regenerated, and this extra protective shield is noted by a color change (purple) in the UI.
• Overshields have a cap at 1200.

Vanilla (2012-10-25)

• Introduced.

1. ↑ "Shards within 3m of Mag now orbit her, inflicting the Slash or Puncture Status Effect to nearby enemies." - Update 32.0
2. ↑ "Shards within 3m of Mag now orbit her, inflicting the Slash or Puncture Status Effect to nearby enemies." - Update 32.0