*Shield Testing Complete!* - NMG/Adrenaline/Resist? Who is the winner?

Hi! After much testing, I have to say that I think they each have their strengths and weaknesses. I will have to play my Heavy Assault for a few hours straight to determine my playstyle, then choose the shield that accomodates it. My gut leans toward Adrenaline, which if its base regen is 60 seconds like the NMG, is pretty much better than the NMG in all circumstances due to its 45sec effective regen.

Resist Shield provides you with lower effective health than either NMG or Adrenaline Shield, but it balances that with significantly more up-time on its brand of damage soaking.

Here's the data. Infantry and Vehicle Weapon DPS is on the second tab, Heavy Assault Shield Testing on the third tab.
https://docs.google.com/spreadsheet/ccc?key=0Ao2sGqpRdtcDdEpSM1llZEtOU1BGSjVLaGQxMUJHNXc

Shout out to Thorbinator. Special thanks to KillerStreak and JThompson.

Cheers.

"Likes" or replies if this was helpful would be appreciated!
Also, if you have questions, I might have answers.

ah... am I the only one that sees no data whatsoever?

uhm, your spreadsheet is empty

edit: here it is https://docs.google.com/spreadsheet/ccc?key=0Ao2sGqpRdtcDdEpSM1llZEtOU1BGSjVLaGQxMUJHNXc#gid=2

Try the 2 other sheets on the bottom. It should be the third one.

Shows how much I use google spreadsheets.

Interesting info.

Short version - Resist is 45% damage reduction. The other two are roughly the strength of another shield or health bar (tad more).

If I read it right, it also means that losing a bar or two of the default heavy shield from turning it on a second early doesn't impact it's ability to absorb damage as much as one would think, as there appears to be a cap on how much it'll absorb at once (around a full shield/health bar or just over, depending).

The note about standard shields not regenerating while the heavy shield is up, though likely only really an issue for people with the Resist shield.


Pretty much brings it back to playstyle. Resist shield needs to be used pre-emptively and probably functions best with a medic to support you (or medic/resto kit spam), to take advantage of the higher shield uptime combined with the enemy being able to do health damage to you sooner. NMG/Adrenaline are good in any situation and the choice between the two is regen style preference.

Though yeah, if NMG5 changes it from a 60 second to 45 second cooldown, and you assume that when you deplete your shield (and live to regen it) you generally get a kill... Adrenaline seems to come out ahead in the majority of cases as any extra kills during the regen period are just gravy. And if you're using it to absorb damage without getting a kill (running cover to cover, dodging a tank, whatever) the slightly faster NMG regen is unlikely to make that much of a difference anywhere near often enough.

Mostly correct. If you see the TX1 Repeater observation marked "Dmg Obs., Mid" (row 8), NMG was popped after the first burst in a volley of three bursts. If you see the line above it, that was popped before all three bursts.

NMG reduction does appear to be capped at 500 points maximum reduction from a single projectile, i.e. tank fire, rocket fire, anything other 500. For things that do less than 500 like any infantry weapon short of sniper rifles, as evidenced by the TX1 Repeater, the reduction is based on the amount of charge you have in your NMG, where 1 NMG indicator light = 50 points of shielding. Note, there are only 13 indicator lights, but in actually 15 increments or tiers of shielding. You can time this and see the drain hiccup at indicator 6 and 4. See the rocket damage test data in rows 20-34 for numbers.

That'd be a good follow-up test, to see if bolt actions only have 500 of the 750 absorbed and not 600.

Yes, or the Adrenaline Shield. NMG is probably not affected, but re-popping Adrenaline's 25% boost after killing one guy will stop shield recovery.

I agree to all this. Probably Adrenaline before NMG, and up to player between Adrenaline and Resist. Good thing to. No diversity or balance if one shield reigned supreme.

On the regen time, is that the regen time to recharge from 0 to full? I find the difference between resist shield and the other 2 to be fairly big, it's 17seconds only for the resist shield to regen to full? Sounds pretty good as long as you keep using it before you take dmg. Might use that.

Thanks a lot for the analysis, been playing medic/engineer but wanted to check out HA and that's exactly the kind of stuff I was looking for.

Yes, it is the time to recharge from shield deactivation to full charge. I timed it originally as Resist Shield 4 in beta at 17 seconds, and again on release with Resist Shield 1 as 17 seconds. While I presume regen time to be a flat 17 seconds, Sykro timed the regen as a 1-2 second increase at each level...

At Resist Shield 4 or 5 his timing on regen is pretty much the same anyway at roughly 17-18 seconds. Yes, ~1/3 that of NMG or Adrenaline.

No problem! Enjoy HA whenever you get to it. Kill bodies.

Neat, looks like NMG is best general purpose shield, like I thought.

Was surprised to see it as effective as it is though. I'd assumed it provided much less effective health.

Also, in an unrelated note, I am so glad to finally see MAX weapons showing up in one of these. I've been wondering what the actual differences were, and now I know. Should have stuck to 2x scattercannons with slug ammo the whole time, stupid *** grinder with it's shiny additional two magazine size.

I have 2 questions:
1. Why maxlvl NWA gives 1125 instead of 1250
2. One of my outfitmates stated that the right formula for resist shield should be 1125/0.55 and not 1125/1.45, mind it a bit and tell me if you think he's right, thx =)

P.S. if he's right then the resist shield gives more EHP than the NMG

nanoweave increases health by 25%. overall effective health on a no armor slot character is 1000. 500 shield, 500 health. So yeah, it's just +125 because it doesn't affect your shield.

oh well, you are right, didnt think about that
what about the second question?

Your Resist Shield EHP values are wrong. Unlike the other abilities, Resist Shield has positive interaction with both your health bar and your energy shield.

1000/0.55 = 1818 EHP
1125/0.55 = 2045 EHP with NA5

This is in direct contradiction what I have seen mentioned before. Even the spreadsheet in this topic says "damage taken eats into shield and health reserves; loses effectiveness if not activated before taking damage", which implies that energy shields interact with resist shield.

Is this assumption false?

so the RS is overall better than the NMG apparently


Well 45% of 1000 is 450, so 1450 EHP should be right, i dunno

How did you figure out which weapon ID is for which weapon?

we are not talking about weapons in this topic...
Here is the explanation my outfitmate gave me few minutes ago:

"Effective Hit Point is basically how many damage you can take before you die. If you take 2045 damage while the RS is active then 45 % is absorbed (can be found in the doc) and 55 % will be subtracted from your actual HP, which is 2045 * 0.55= 1124.75. This will leave you barely alive with 0.25 HP."

This pretty much explain why RS>NMG, now that i got it explained well i'm pretty much sure that xxxx/0.55 it's the right formula