What is shield gating in Warframe?

In Warframe, the player can control several different mechs and characters, such as the Necramech, the Archwing, and the Drifter. The newest free roam Duviri world-space is the only instance with exclusive Drifter usage in the game. The entirety of Warframe otherwise pits you in the titular war machines called Warframes. Despite their near-unmatched combat prowess, many are not particularly durable.

How much beating a frame can take depends on three of their defensive stats: armor, shield, and health. Until 2020, the shield was considered the weakest component on the trifecta for most frames.

Thanks to the ‘Overshields’ mechanic, one could technically pile up shields by the thousands with abilities such as Trinity’s Energy Vampire. Unlike health, shield also regenerates by default on all frames.

However, the damage mitigation acquired from armor only applies on health, meaning it is a much bigger point of focus for general durability.

Update 27.2 brought significant changes to the overall functionalities of shield. They still do not benefit from armor but introduce invulnerability frames temporarily whenever they are fully depleted. This mechanic of damage confinement while the shield breaks is called shield gating.

Shield breaks and shield delay in Warframe, explained

Hildryn's Haven Grants her the largest shield gate in Warframe (image via Digital Extremes) — Hildryn’s Haven Grants her the largest shield gate in Warframe (image via Digital Extremes)

Irrespective of how much shield you have, fully depleting it will give you 1.3 seconds of invulnerability from all damage, along with the following:

There is a four-second delay after a shield break before your shields start generating.
For Gauss, this delay is uniquely 0.8 seconds, i.e. 20% of regular delay, if he is at 100% battery charge.
If you get through this delay and regenerate at least one point of shield but not 100% of it, there is a mini-shield gate effect that grants only 0.3 seconds of i-frames
If you regenerate shields back to 100%, you regain full i-frames on the next shield break.

There are two abilties in the game that modifies the duration of a shield gate. All allies affected by the following gain three seconds of invulnerability:

Hildryn’s Haven
Protea’s Grenade Fan (Shield Satelites module)

While there are a number of avenues to stay durable in Warframe, this is the only frame-neutral method which lets you ‘tank’ level cap content. In high level Steel Path, enemy damage is high enough to one-shot your Health reserves no matter how high your armor is.

In places like this, the only way to stay alive and trade blows with the enemy is with the shield gating mechanic.

How to utilize shield gating to be immortal in Warframe

Standard build in Warframe that uses shield gating to stay alive (image via Digital Extremes)

Abusing the shield gating mechanic boils down to simply regenerating your shields completely within the 1.3 second window. This is nearly impossible to do under direct gunfire by default. There are certain abilties that can help you gain shields directly:

Energy Vampire (augment mod)
Discharge (augment mod)
Pillage
Condemn

This is inflexible and not viable for all builds or Warframes, as only two of these abitlies can be slotted on other builds through Helminth.

The meta way to do this for all frames involves usage of the Brief Respite aura mod. Firstly, this refunds shields depending on how much energy you spend on abilities without cooldown.

This is paired with a corrupted item called Decaying Dragon Key. Decaying Dragon key decreases shields by 75% of its base value. Even though this is a debuff, it works to our advantage for shield gating purposes.

The idea is that the shield regained through Brief Respite through a single ability cast will exceed your base shield. With a few Augur mods and/or low ability efficiency, this is possible with most spammable abilities.

In other words, a single ability can reset your shield gating i-frames, enabling you to immediately benefit from another i-frame again.

The final pillar of this build is the Rolling Guard mod. This gives you three seconds of invulnerability when you roll, on a seven-second cooldown. Although not mandatory, this gives you a greater margin of error, thanks to over four seconds of cumulative i-frames letting you reposition successfully.