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  1. #1

    Clarification on Deflector Shield

    Hello all,

    I am well aware that the shield does not protect your body fully. But I am making a skill DPS build using an assault drone + deflector shield. To my surprise, the shield does not work like the Crusader/Striker, where NPC will shoot the shield instead of your face. I have been wiped one time too many with my shield not even loss 75% of its health.

    Seeking on community feedback on how actually the Deflector shield works. Is it that I cannot tank NPC because of this? That will be very disappointing since it has almost 8 million health at tier 6 and average of 272k deflected damage (excluding spotter, combined arms and perfect spike).
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  2. #2
    Sircowdog1's Avatar Senior Member
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    Originally Posted by zukhashim Go to original post
    Seeking on community feedback on how actually the Deflector shield works..
    It doesn't. Game over.

    Right now it's broken. It's not worth using. I'm hoping they fix it in TU10, but for the time being just use something else.
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  3. #3
    All shield variants need an aggro mechanic which causes npc to focus fire onto the shield. Shield is supposed to be a tank build but tank only works if it takes all aggro of the other players like the dps & healers etc. In this sense all shields are broken but if you can see a difference in npc behaviour with the deflector shield then clearly there must be some numbers/parametres that can be tweeked to make them all more useful i guess.
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  4. #4
    I have created a deflector shield load out and it does not seem to work at all against elite targets. Shield takes very little damage, does not deflect, and you die as if you did not have a shield at all...specifically heavy gunner and bombadier.
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  5. #5
    in theory the deflector shield works, somewhat
    the problme it has are many though
    first and most importand, its tiny, so even when used in a perfect angle against a single attacker, you will never block every incoming bullet with it, sometimes even less then half
    i you now have an angle petween where your shield is pointing and from where your shot this becomes even more apparent and at small angles like 20° less then half the bullets still get blocked

    so in order to us this shield you need a ton of armor and strong armor regen/repair for you and your shield
    and this is where your build completly fell apart i guess, assuming you have good shd lvl you should ahve close to 1m combined health and armor(all yellow i guess)
    so assuming you can somehow sustain a 80% blockrate(not very easy) you need enough health/armor to survivve the remaining 20% of dmg, which is mch easier then you might think
    since the deflector shield takes 3.65 times as much dmg as your charachter you need muchz less then 600k armor if you can actually sustain this 80% block rate and not die without the shield breaking
    but a blockrate of 50% is more realisitic if you ahve more then 1 enemy that is shooting you, now you already need more then 2.5m armor/health to survive your shield an i guess you dont have that much armor while maintaining any skilltier at all, even with max armor your looking at ~2m instead ofhte required 2.5m

    so inthis case the bad survivability of the shield masks the underlying problem of the deflector not being hit often enough
    and this has a single cause, the shield is NEVER targeted by the enemy, they always shoot for the agent and ignore if the shield is in the way, so their bullets can be blocked
    so if the enemy is not attacking from perfect front they will try to shoot around the shield, instead of the shield itself (this is logical but not helpfull for hte deflector)
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  6. #6
    Originally Posted by Joonnnyy Go to original post
    in theory the deflector shield works, somewhat
    the problme it has are many though
    first and most importand, its tiny, so even when used in a perfect angle against a single attacker, you will never block every incoming bullet with it, sometimes even less then half
    i you now have an angle petween where your shield is pointing and from where your shot this becomes even more apparent and at small angles like 20° less then half the bullets still get blocked

    so in order to us this shield you need a ton of armor and strong armor regen/repair for you and your shield
    and this is where your build completly fell apart i guess, assuming you have good shd lvl you should ahve close to 1m combined health and armor(all yellow i guess)
    so assuming you can somehow sustain a 80% blockrate(not very easy) you need enough health/armor to survivve the remaining 20% of dmg, which is mch easier then you might think
    since the deflector shield takes 3.65 times as much dmg as your charachter you need muchz less then 600k armor if you can actually sustain this 80% block rate and not die without the shield breaking
    but a blockrate of 50% is more realisitic if you ahve more then 1 enemy that is shooting you, now you already need more then 2.5m armor/health to survive your shield an i guess you dont have that much armor while maintaining any skilltier at all, even with max armor your looking at ~2m instead ofhte required 2.5m

    so inthis case the bad survivability of the shield masks the underlying problem of the deflector not being hit often enough
    and this has a single cause, the shield is NEVER targeted by the enemy, they always shoot for the agent and ignore if the shield is in the way, so their bullets can be blocked
    so if the enemy is not attacking from perfect front they will try to shoot around the shield, instead of the shield itself (this is logical but not helpfull for hte deflector)
    i somewhat understand your answer. and i can conclude that the developer needs to tweak this shield so that it has a larger hitbox and threat level so that it is more feasible in combat. it's clearly useless in PVP since players can target your face, but in PVE needs the mechanic to work like the crusader shield.

    am i right?
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  7. #7
    Sircowdog1's Avatar Senior Member
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    Originally Posted by zukhashim Go to original post
    i somewhat understand your answer. and i can conclude that the developer needs to tweak this shield so that it has a larger hitbox and threat level so that it is more feasible in combat. it's clearly useless in PVP since players can target your face, but in PVE needs the mechanic to work like the crusader shield.

    am i right?
    Ideally it would use the same hitbox as the crusader shield. I don't know why it doesn't, since the tradeoff is being able to use only pistols and relying on the reflected shots to male up the difference in damage.
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  8. #8
    IgotNerfed's Avatar Senior Member
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    It works but only against reds, purples, and normal yellows, Anything above normal difficulty and you'll get screwed anyway, Probably best to use it with a bit of distance between you and the NPCs. I used it with the liberty pistol but I threw a fair bit of weapon handling into my build and I can ping liberty headshots from a good distance. From the doors you break at the end of the Grand washington mission using the minigun that's my headshot ping distance. Even while being shot at.

    I have put stability into my watch and added 38% handling on top of that to my build. My Liberty still hits at almost 460k
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