Shield or Health???

[Shinobi]

Which one should be more?Shield or health?

[M4tt]

Depends on warframe.

[Neptunes_Requiem]

Warframes with high armor benifit from a higher health pool while warframes with low armor are better off with high sheilds. It also depends on your play style if you use guerrilla warfare your better off having high sheilds seeing as they rechrage on the other hand if you are getting into prolonged fire fights higher health can increase the duration you can engage with the enemy. There are some people that strike a balance between the two. so needlessly long story short it depends on the frame and the tenno controling it.

[Steven]

Generally health is more useful, as armor values only apply to health, but it also doesn't regenerate itself like shields do without mods or abilities. I almost always do both unless their are specific reasons not to. As example, valkyr has really high armor and works well with the rage mod, so i boost health and armor and leave sheilds at minimum. On the other hand, ivara is a stealth frame, so avoiding getting hit is ideal. Having more shields let's me take a few hits here and there and just regenerate the shields lost. Overall, depends on the frame or the playstyle you are pursuing.

[Artek [General]]

For most cases, honestly, you should have both. Just put redirection and vitality in there and you are good to go.


Even shield-heavy warframes should have vitality, due to certain damage type.

The problem is - damage to health is usually permanent so you will go down sooner or later. Shields, even though they dont have damage reduction, regenerate.

There are, however, few warframes that can skip shields all together since their shields are non existant and they have ways to restore heath.
Those are: Valkyr, Nidus, the mummy-one (forgot his name).
And to a lesser extent (with certain mods / builds): Excalibur, Trinity, Oberon.

[Maraxus]

I generally take health when a frame has no clear advantage towards one or the other, as it is boosted by armor and is more reliable in combat than shields in most scenarios.

[DrFeelWorse]

Concept is pretty simple, take a look at the frames base health and shield pool, whichever one is higher you should focus that if you would like to save some mod space.

I rely more on energy than anything else, but I do not play every frame.

Loki does not benefit from either unless you are doing some really low-tier stuff, it's just a waste for him especially if you are going with an invis build.

Same with Frost in my opinion, but I do use vigor on Frost mixed with an armor/Snow Globe (not sure why I call it "frost bubble") build.

I do not even bother with Octavia as I just slap on duration and efficiency to have the distraction of her 1+2 constantly.

Ash I use all health mods, so he can take damage more constantly with rage. Same goes with Valkyr as she can get health back from her 4th.

Volt is full shield.

Etc etc etc

If you are far enough in frame you should have a few different ways to sap health back, either through your pet, sentinel (although slowly), melee, etc. In all honesty, I worry about health last.

[ExcelDog]

Shield and health)

[Warhunter]

for the most part. shields are better only because they can regen, sentinels can instantly replenish full shields, and a certain kubrow (forgot name) can replenish shields.

health is good only for frames with high armor / high initial health.
through if you health tank i suggest finding ways to be able to replenish it in a fight. certain life steal mods on melee weapons, or certain warframe abilities.

[Bowbie]

I only go with vitality, not on every frame/build though. But i never go for redirection that's for sure.

With mediray and armor, i find this better and safer.

[Walrus-Sama]

Health, always health.

Shields are weak. They have no form of damage reduction and several damage type can completely bypass or negate them (Slash procs, Toxic procs, Mag procs). The fact they can regenerate means nothing if under heavy fire or these procs happen.

Health can use the damage reduction of Armor, even on squishy frames you have more EHP choosing Vitality over Redirection. Now Slash and Toxic procs can ignore Shields and Armor, but you will be able to survive these longer when you hare a larger health pool (The difference of being Toxic/slash proc'd with 740 Health compared to 300 is very noticable.).

Now it's true most frames (except Nidus) don't have Health regen. But there are a number of option to get Health pack. Personaly I use Life Strike (unranked) on all Melee weapons, it is enough to sustain yourself in most situations. But there's also things like Hurado, Hema, a healing frame, Sentinel healing you, etc.

For me, I find a Max rank Vitality (+440% Health) is enough for most frames and only takes up 1 mod slot for HP, leaving space for better builds. Of cource things like Tanks and such who can take advantage of more survivablity mods should, but just a Vitality is a good universal base for all frames.

[On Vacation]

Depends on the frame, your playstyle and on the content. As people pointed out looking at health and shields will generally give you an idea which way to go.

As a general rule if a frame has 150 armor or lower then effective hp is increased more by;

1) Vitality>Vigor>Redirection if frames base health is greater or equal to base shields
2)Redirection>Vigor>Vitality if frames base shields are greater than base health

Once you cross 150 armor, then Vitality provides more EHP regardless of whether base shields are higher then health. Again though this is just a general rule of thumb.. EHP isn't the end all be all. Depending on the frame, your skill level, whether solo or grouped and the content you're facing you may need both shields and health, one of them, or none at all.

[Kawalorn]

Why not both? I put both maxed Reditection and Vitality on all my frames, except for the no-shield ones.

[Ras-pica]

Best answer: unless your warframe benefits from increased health (like Chroma or Inaros, for example), don't increase health. As for shields, don't invest in them, and NO EXCEPTIONS. Use a Taxon sentinel if you want more shields so badly, or buy Harrow and spam his 1 ability.

[SPIDERna]

How about quick thinking with primed flow ??

[Kargor]

Originally posted by Raspica Blue:

Best answer: unless your warframe benefits from increased health (like Chroma or Inaros, for example), don't increase health. As for shields, don't invest in them, and NO EXCEPTIONS. Use a Taxon sentinel if you want more shields so badly, or buy Harrow and spam his 1 ability.

From a newbie perspective, seeing how fast things can take down shields, "no shields" is about the worst one can come up with.

Yes, there are enemies that damage through shields, but a lot of damage does hit the shields first. So, right now, my Excalibur has both Redirection and Vitality (upped to +100%, IIRC -- that's not max rank, but I don't have a lot of mod capacity), and even a +20% shield regeneration. Warframe doesn't try very hard to ensure there's always a safe place for me to recharge my shields.

Because, as was said before, shields regenerate and health does not. Often I do a hit-and-run type of thing where I run into a room, try to take down a couple of enemies, then run back out to let my shields regenerate. If I make it through a fight without loosing health, then it's considered a good fight.

Infested are extremely annoying/dangerous due to ther poison attacks, but Griineer are devastating even with shields. I couldn't get anywhere without upped shields in those areas, as they really take the edge off the bread-and-butter phyiscal damage attackers and mostly leave the fire guys to worry about (especially those dog-summoner types, they can burn you to a crisp in no time)

Taxon is nice, but he's also slow and not very effective. I like both the cold proc and the shield bonus, but it's just a bonus. At the beginning of most fights my shields are at their regular 500, without any Taxon bonus on top of them because that's where the regeneration puts them. Taxon bonus requires enemies, and those don't usually just stand there letting Taxon bonus-up my shields. They actually fire at me, doing way more damage to my shield than Taxon can pull out of them.