Shield

Orb Shields or simply Shields are rechargeable Shield generators that prevent characters from receiving damage to their health, including projectile weapon damage, elemental, melee or even damage from falling, until a Shield's charge is depleted.

Appearance
Shields are invisible when not active, however once a character takes damage a colored hexagonal grid contours to the character's figure as the bullets are blocked. The color of the Shield (as it takes damage) denotes what kind of Shield it is and what kind of special ability it has. Shields with fire resistance will be red, Shields with shock resistance will be purplish-blue, Shields with corrosive resistance will be green, non-elemental Shields will be white. There are no shields that offer protection from explosive damage.

Gameplay
Shields are essential to any player as they recharge much faster than conventional health regeneration. An equipped Shield will gradually recharge to full power during periods when the wearer is not sustaining damage. It does however take a slight delay after the last time damage was taken to initiate the recharge effect. When mostly depleted, a blue exclamation alert flashes above a character's Health bar to warn the player.
 * Shields are acquired in the same manner as all other loot: dropped by enemies and chests, purchased at vending machines or rewarded by missions.
 * Shield rarity is similar to that of all weapons, except that the rarity found among Shields goes from purple to pearlescent with no yellow or orange rarity in between.
 * Shield capacity can be increased by some character skills or COMs.
 * Shield recharge rates (energy recharged per second) directly affect the time it takes to recharge to 100% capacity - the higher the recharge rate, the faster the Shield recharges to full.
 * Shield recharge delay is a hidden value that determines the number of seconds after taking damage that the Shield begins to recharge. This delay is NOT directly related to the recharge rate. The only way of finding this rate is either through the debug info for PC users, or timing with a grenade. A bit of reverse engineering with gear-calc can also help.
 * Shield recharge delay may simply be a dividend of capacity divided by recharge rate with the result measured in seconds.
 * Shields with elemental resistances reduce damage taken by that element. 66% damage received for regular resistant Shields, 50% damage received for high resistant Shields & 33% damage received for extreme resistant Shields. For example if a shock bullet were to hit a player for 120 damage (100%), then they would only receive 80 damage (66%) with a regular shock resistant Shield, 60 damage (50%) for a high shock resistant Shield, and 40 damage (33%) for an extreme shock resistant Shield.(Note that different elements naturally have different affinity for shields, for example, shock is 200% effective against shields, thus a shock bullet will actually do 33% x 2 = 66% damage to an extreme shock resistant shield)
 * Shields which create Elemental Bursts when depleted will do so only if the Shield was recharging or full before being depleted. However the skills Quick Charge, Girl Power and Unbreakable will not cause such Shields to continuously emit Elemental Bursts if they are repeatedly depleted when the skill is active.

Shields are an effective defense against projectile attacks like bullets and rockets and will also protect against any melee attack. They are, however, extremely vulnerable to shock attacks and will diminish quickly if under constant fire.

Unique Shields

 * Wee Wee's Super Booster - Dropped by King Wee Wee
 * Cracked Sash - Dropped by Rakkinishu

Pearlescent Shields
These Shields are only available from The Secret Armory of General Knoxx DLC. They are the first Shields in the game to have red text abilities.


 * Ironclad - "I stand unvanquished!" - Boosted Shield capacity.
 * Omega - "The alpha and that other thing" - High recharge rate, buffed capacity.
 * Rose - "Beauty and life" - Gives massive Health regeneration when depleted, super fast recharge rate.

Special Effects
All Shields1 in Borderlands are outfitted with special modules, giving them various effects, from offensive elemental properties to extra health or healing. The effects are chosen by the Manufacturer, and the intensity of the effect by the Material Grade. As a general rule, effects or higher quality effects do not come at any trade-off to Shield stats. You do not "pay" to have the effect (unlike, for example, weapons that "pay" reduced damage, to have Elemental ability).

Finally, note that this effect (material grade) is responsible for the Shield's name. Torgue will share several Titles for the same effect.

1With the exception of Tediore Standard Shields found in the very first Med Vendor in Playthrough 1 Fyrestone.

2This Shield's name is bugged, in-game it will be only called a Shield instead of a Fire Burst Shield (e.g. VDF-10FRR Quick Charge Shield). Vladof's other Shields are named correctly.

Shield Anatomy
All shields have the same base stats that are entirely determined only by their level. The recharge rate is always 15% of the capacity, and the Recharge Delay is of 7 seconds.

Shields are constituted of 4 parts: The the body, the left side, the right side and the manufacturer material. The Shield stats are then modified by its parts. Shield effects have no effect on Shield stats, apart from Anshin and Pangolin Shields. Notice that part modifiers stack additively.

The Left Side and Right Side of the Shield improves the Shield's Speed and Capacity respectively. There is no trade-off: Higher quality is better.


 * Note: the parts of the shield known as "left" and "right" are relative to the shield's point of view. This means that on screen, the shield's "left part" appears on the right, and the "right part" appears on the left.

The Body is the most defining feature of the Shield. The parts come in three categories: Balanced, High Capacity, and Fast Recharge. There is a choice to be made, as each have their ups and down:
 * and are of type rounded balance, with body1_balanced substantially better than body1.
 * and are of type fast recharge, with body4 substantially better than body2.
 * and are of type high capacity, with body3b_power being substantially better than body 3.


 * Note:The only way to tell apart two shields with the same body type is to use the shield code

Shield Name
Unlike weapons, the name of the Shield has no incidence on the stats of the Shield. An Alacritous Shield will recharge quite fast, but this is just an indication, not an extra effect.

The Shield's name is determined by the Manufacturer and Material Quality. The shield's prefix is determined by the body type and the quality/rarity of the shield (and not by any actual stats):

The shield code is determined by all of the above. It starts with manufacturer code, an hyphen, then the sum of the left and right side code3, and finally body code, as follows:

3When the rightside is, or the leftside is , a 0 is removed from the code. For example, + becomes 40.

4When or  is used, Anshin shields are promoted to ANS2

5When is used, Pangolin shields are promoted to PNG2