Vanguard Shield Question

I am a pure VS player, so I am unsure of how the vanguard's shield works.
Hoping someone can explain it to me, don't know what to do when I fight one.
Does it work like a resist shield, only mitigating damage, and lasting a set amount of time?
Or is it like a NMG, temporarily giving it extra shield(armor for MBT)? And it goes away if taken enough damage.

Let's say I'm in a fully certed blockade sunderer, and a vanguard behind me with no angle at my sides engages me.
I use bulldogs(highest dps for use against armor for the sunderer, I think). I shoot repeatedly at his top armor, him in my rear. He pops his shield, denying my victory. What do I do? Do I wait for it to disappear(which is what I did in this real scenario against an AP Vanguard last week) or should I continue firing?
He won, with about 1/6 of it's life left.
Also I didn't have a second gunner

It completely absorbs all damage for its duration. Nevertheless, incredible amounts of damage can overload it.

At max rank it absorbs 3000 damage over 8 seconds.

If all you're doing is shooting at a shielded VG with a bulldog, it will probably be up the whole 8 seconds. But a deci or tank round to the rear of the VG will take away half the shield. It's only really useful in head to head 1v1 fights, or to survive a surprise ESF attack. To be honest it sounds like he wasn't using AP rounds and didn't have a gunner if the fight was that close, a 2/2 AV Vanguard can usually beat the best of sundies without having to pop their shield, especially with some reinforced armor.

Wait for the shield to disappear. At max level it lasts 8 seconds I believe. Ive taken 2 bricks of C4 on the shield before, never has it gone off early, it just tanks the dmg. If that shield pops try to hop into cover, you always want cover nearby when fighting a vanny. Or if you are low on health id recommend trying to hop out and repair your sundy while he has his shield popped.

If possible never stop moving, our cannons fire super slow and if we miss its bad bad bad.

If you had a second gunner then it may have been advisable to continue firing- in the scenario you describe you probably did the best you could (especially if you took that 8 seconds to reload both weapons- then you can switch from one to the other instead of having to wait for the reload later).

Although, if the Van was hitting your rear and you could not engage the rear of the Van then without a second gunner as was lost and should have been lost- I'm surprised you did as well as you did considering it was an MBT. I find it hard to believe that most MBT drivers would not have bested a Sunderer in that position- though, you do say you had fully certed blockade armor and I have not done the math.

They should disable at LEAST the drivers ability to shoot while its active

Do it your self by strafing behind some rocks. L2P bro.

I would be 100% behind something like this provided that they completely rework the Vanguard so that it is not the least scoring of the three. Until then, since the Vanguard is and has always been the least cert rewarding MBT to play then I say an absolute NO to any nerfs.

Just bad form to call for nerfs on the faction hardcoded as the worst for over a year and on the one thing that they have that is worth anything and on something that is the lowest performer of the bunch in terms of the only reward provided by the game.

You will note, that the Vanguard has the slowest firing of the three factions, and needs to make all rounds hit to be competitive in a Tank battle. Add to it, the slowest acceleration of the three, so unless they had the racer chassis, they tend to not move nearly as fast. Even with the Racer Chassis, while it can accelerate a bit better, it is like driving a lead brick on wheels, hard to turn or stop.

Look, If you were fighting me you would have been annihilated in like, less than 10 seconds.


Like others have said, the shield takes 3000HP (a tank has 4000HP) worth of damage on all ranks and can last from 5-8 seconds and takes 45-60 seconds to cool down depending the the cert level. It also takes directional damage meaning shots to the rear will reduce the shield HP faster.

It's basically a 8 second, 3000HP extension. I have never had a Sunderer with just it's guns drop the shield faster than the timer, so there would be no point on firing on it if you are alone. 1 brick of C4 will almost dissipate the shield post-PU2 update.


The only thing actually scary about sunderer's for a Vanguard are the passengers. If they all jump out and start charging me with C4, AV maxes and rocket launchers or if they are a team of engineers that get on the other side of the sunderer and repair it I kinda get panicky because there's a pretty good chance that I'm screwed and no shield is going to be able to help much if I don't get away in time.

Correct me if I am wrong, but the directional damage it takes are equivalent to the Vanguards normal resist values. Which bring the health pool up to 9375 for the front, 8571 for the sides and top, and 4615 for the rear for the shield alone.

Yes, the ratio sounds right but I'm not sure if you can really calculate it as a fixed HP value due to different resist %'s for each weapon & type.

Well the only things that have positive resist values (apart from the obvious C4 and AP rounds) are items that are designed so they can't be used to OHK infantry. Like the Lancer and Phoenix. But in those case most people take the modified damage when working them out, i.e. the Phoenix doing 2000 damage and not the 750 it really does before its modifier. But either way, you can still work out its effectiveness against the base value HP. For example the shield adds 312.5% more effective HP to the front of the the vehicle for those 8 seconds.

Ugh, when are people going to realize that trying to nerf the Vanguard shield or complaining about the Vanguard isn't going to make the Prowler/Magrider better tanks. It's just going to make the Vanguard mediocre, which I don't want and others shouldn't want. I've said it many times and I'll say it again, no more nerfs for tanks. Nerfing tanks makes the game even more infantryside 2 than it is now, and I really don't want to see how far into the trench the game can fall in that regards. It's time to go back up into the shining light that is combined arms focused gameplay, and changes that are focused on making the game revolve around combined arms...

The only way to beat a derped Vannie in a close encounter is to quickly swing behind it and shoot the buttocks. Which is only possible in a Mag; I feel for you Prowler types. When you crest a hill and find yourself 2 feet from a Vannie do you just log out or stick around to see if it's the 1/100 that doesn't have a maxed shield?

That was me. Amerish satellite base, yeah? I later realized why the match was so close.

Blockade gives extra protection on the rear, so I was firing into your strongest part, which I'd forgotten. Also I was too lazy to seat switch. Which is why it was so close, all said and done.

That said, Vanguard shield gives extra HP and can be destroyed early. It's nanomesh that can't be turned off.

Nobody said anything about nerfing anything

Sunderers have no rear armor penalty. A sunderer with blockade armor actually takes LESS damage from the rear, then it does from the sides/top.

Mastermind did, and while I'm glad you didn't these days many people are trying to get the Vanguard's shield usefulness reduced.

I was a Vanguard driver for the entire time the shield was bugged to drop after a fraction of a second and I refuse to go back.

The Vanguard has none of the perks the other tanks have that earn them more points, it's a big slow beast that's essentially a Titan AP delivery system. It doesn't slaughter infantry in droves, it doesn't scale cliffs or squirt between rocks to land shots. It sits there and hits hard, the shield is VITAL to the tank.