Best Shield Choice for Shield of Retribution Moze

So I’ve been doing alot of thinking about Moze’s viability in this tree recently, and one of the main topics I have been debating in my head is which type of shield will be best to equip her with. I see 2 different potentially strong approaches here:

#1 Turtle Shield. This tree has alot of skills for boosting shield capacity and Moze deals more damage the lower her health is, so it seems to me that a shield that has a huge capacity and lowers you own health might work really well on her. The downside is that Turtle shields have slow regen speeds and delays, which could really hurt you in TVHM where enemies are going to be hitting harder, once your shield drops and Tenacious Defense procs to restore 40% of you shield, you need to get your shield back to 100% before Tenacious Defense will proc again, and that could be difficult with a turtle shield since they regen incredibly slowly, it might be impossible to get a turtle shield back to 100% during combat except by entering Iron Bear with the Full Can of Whoop-Ass skill, though you can’t do that often since Iron Bear has such a long cooldown.

#2 Tediore Shield- Tediore shields have low capacity, but really fast regen speeds and delays, you can typically get a Tediore shield back to 100% in 2 seconds or less. Moze’s Behind the Iron curtain skill improves her regen speed and delay, which will lower that even more. The upside of this is that you will be able to get back to 100% shield much faster so that your Tenacious Defense safety net will be restored. The downside is that if you take any damage at all, regen will be interrupted, and since you have lower capacity you will be that much more vulnerable. DoT effects in particularly could really hurt this strategy by preventing any regen for a long period of time.

So, what do you guys think the better option will be? Or is there another Shield type entirely that you think will work well on Moze?

Combine this with a fast firing vladof weapon and forced feedback.


That will be pretty good, though you will need to get a crit kill almost immediately to start regen quickly, because waiting 6.7 seconds for shield regen to start would not be ideal. Even if you do start regen almost immediately, with that regen speed it would take 6 seconds to get back to 100% shield again so that Tenacious Defense can proc again. Hopefully will be possible to farm one with lower capacity and faster regen than that one, and combine that with Behind the Iron Curtain for even faster shield regen, so you can actually get your shield back to 100% before the 5 second immunity ends.

This is based on how I’m using her. The only character I’m using for serious bossng is Fl4k.

I think Moze is the best in the game for straight mobbing. Moze should have no problems either killing trash around her in 5 seconds or getting 1 crit kill that starts the recharge…which “based on wording” resets the condition immunity condition of the shield. It’s kind of a back up to tenacious defense.

Beyond that…we dont know anything until the game actually comes out.

Tediore fast shields are a good match because you can stack their capacity through Phalanx stacks.
Offensively, I think spike are going to be a good mobing option.

Now, this Legendary is going to be nuts if we can get one with a better recharge rate.

The ideal solution will vary depending on your playstyle, but from my imagination I would prefer Turtle shields with 2 turtle shield effects (each gives -10% max up for +30% capacity) and 1 for recharge rate (+30% shield recharge rate). The reason for this combination is that high base capacity keeps you safe early in a fight until you have your first 3 to 5 stacks of “Phalanx Doctrine”, but once you get rolling and can keep on critting enemies, you will need the recharge rate to outpace incoming damage.

If the game has a unique/legendary shield that has solid capacity, but bases it’s shield recharge rate off of it’s capacity, then we have a winner, but until then, there might be a competition as the argument could be made that a Tediore shield could be better. This might be true, but it depends on the damage enemies do with their base attacks. If they consistently hit for over 1.5 times your boosted (“Thin Red Line”) shield Capacity, then "Phalanx Doctrine alone might not be enough to keep you topped off, especially if you can’t assure hitting crits. Still, the massively superior shield recharge rate makes Tediore shields very compelling.

We can also start inside Iron Bear and drop out with some Phalanx stacks and keep rolling with a Tediore fast shield.

Thin red line gives a nice base shield value to work with, so I imagine prioritizing recharge speed/delay will be the way to go.

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With a COM that boosts her capstone’s shield restoring ability I could see Turtle shields being great. Otherwise my first priority will likely be ensuring I can keep my shields up. A high, boosted capacity without the regen speed/delay to match it might be troublesome to top off (to reset the capstone for a new gun damage buff). I’m leaning towards Tediore being a strong, general choice before builds get optimized.

I think there’s a misconception with Turtle Shields here. Turtle Shields will reduce maximum health, and not interact well with Desperate Measures or Thin Red Line. However it would help Selfless Vengeance, marginally.

Desperate Measures will work based on health percentages. Thin Red Line interacts with that ability because it reserves your health into shields, making you reach 40% health maximally. Thus you take 60% of Desperate Measures’ potential 50% damage boost, or a 30% damage boost at “max” health.

A Turtle Shield will reduce your max health, not reserve a portion of it. Say you have 200 health: with Thin Red Line at “max” health you will have 80 health and reap a 30% damage bonus. If you equip a -100 health turtle shield, your max health will become 100 and your Thin Red Line “max” becomes 40, at which you reap the same 30% damage bonus.

The Turtle Shield benefit to Selfless Vengeance is that with a lower health pool, you will taking less absolute damage for the same percentage reduction of health with each reload.

The bottom line is choose a Turtle Shield if it provides more effective health than another shield, not for its interaction with Desperate Measures. You may actually find that a 30% health boost shield will provide more effective health if 60% of 30% (18%) of your health is more than the difference between it and the Turtle Shield.

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There’s a guardian rank skill in the Survival tree “Shields start to immediatly recharge after a kill”

Yeah, that will be nice for Shield of Retribution Moze. Also, once we unlock it, we can remove our 1 point from her Force Feedback skill and use it elsewhere, since getting Shield regen from all kills is better than getting shield regen from critical kills only.

Kinda weird that they would render a skill so late in her skill tree completely obsolete like that. Makes me wish there was more to Force Feedback but it will be nice to be able to spend that point elsewhere eventually.

Yeah, you have a point. Maybe Force Feedback will continue to regen shields even if you take damage, whereas the Guardian Rank skill for all kills will have it’s regen interrupted by taking damage?

I think you might have that backwards. Turtle shields reduce your max health by 10% per turtle perk, but that does not hinder “Desperate Measures” or “Thin Red Line” as it just lowers the amount of max health. Basically your 100% health is just a lower amount, but it would still be 100%. DM profits from the -60% max health you’ll constantly have due to TRL and a turtle shield isn’t changing anything about it as it will reduce your max health, where TRL locks you out of a portion of your current max health. The amount of health you’ll have is lower, but the percentage of your maximum health you have left after TRL is the same, so you’ll get the exact same bonus from DM.

Edit: “Desperate Measures” is in a skill tree that makes Moze’s health basically non-existent, so you will not really want to get your shield depleted or else you’ll die. So DM most of the time won’t be stronger than the bonus you’ll get for having 40% of your health. Only exception here is fight for your life.

You should read the rest of my post. It explains precisely what you described, and more. The point is the Turtle Shield doesn’t HELP Desperate Measures. So there is no benefit to using a turtle shield to manipulate health as the OP implies.

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On second reading I saw that, sorry.

I think that the health is almost completely irrelevant for Shield of Retribution except if you don’t want to take “Thin Red Line”. Quick-charging shields might have a chance but they make Moze too squishy. I fear that only capacity is really a relevant factor here. And Recharge Rate to outrecharge incoming damage. Health as a stat has basically no meaning for the SOR tree except some gear specifically increases it to an amount where it can be utilized. But for that we’d need at least a +100% max health Increase, if not more.

Edit: I personally don’t think that “Tenacious Defense” is enough of a reason to let your shield break on purpose. At least not at 1 or 2 points.

Well, technically I was right in that a turtle shield will help. Because things are percentage based, the more shield health you have, the more benefit you get from Vladof Ingenuity. So say you have a shield that has a 2,000 capacity, and you have a turtle shield that has a 4,000 capacity, and 800 health is being converted to shields by Thin Red Line. With Shield A you would have 2,800 capacity before Vladof Ingenuity, with Shield B you would have 4,800. Vladof Ingenuity boosts your shield by 30%. 30% increases shield A to 3,640, an increase of 840. 30% increases shield B to 6,240, an increase of 1440. So the higher capacity your base shield is, the more benefit you get out of Vladof Ingenuity.You will also get more benefit out of the max shield increases from Phalanx Doctrine with a Turtle shield.

Likewise, the same can be said for the damage boosting from Desperate Measures. While it’s true that you won’t gain any bonus damage from using a Turtle Shield while at full health, since Thin Red Line is percentage based, you have less total health if you use a turtle shield, so taking health damage with a turtle shield boosts your damage output from desperate measures more than it would if you took an equal amount of health damage with a non-Turtle shield. So say for instance that you have 1,000 health normally, 400 after Thin Red Line with a non-turtle shield, which we will call shield A. However, the turtle reduces your max health from 1000 to 700, 40% of 700 from Thin Red Line is 280 health with shield B. So you have 400 health with shield A, and 280 health with Shield B. Now say that an enemy hits does 200 health damage to the wearer of each shield. Shield A wearer is down to 200 health. Shield B wearer is down to 80 health. Shield B wearer should therefore be dealing more damage from Desperate Measures than the Shield A wearer would be. That is of course assuming that the maximum +50% damage from Desperate Measures is set at a very low health value. We honestly don’t know what health percentage the maximum +50% damage bonus is set at yet. Could be the we will be dealing the maxium +50% damage bonus from the 40% health from Thin Red Line alone, though I kind of doubt it. I would assume that the maxium is at maybe 5 or 10% health.

Sure, but it will also result in many more FFYL scenarios. That’s why I think of “Tenacious Defense” as a failsafe more than an offensive skill. It might let you push through your last enemies or at least boost your damage while you’re down. Being down however isn’t really a good idea. And as Moze goes below healthgate by default if she uses 3/3 “Thin Red Line”, attacks that break her shield will often just kill her by reducing her tiny bit of health to 0. And yes, that’s when “Desperate Measures” makes the biggest difference, but it’s also where you are the most helpless.

Edit: We however don’t know yet how “Tenacious Defense” exactly works. If it basically gives Moze a free healthgate, like Wilhelms “Divert Power” did, then it would be different.

That’s why I’m leaning more towards fast regen delay and fast regen speed shields personally, rather than max capacity. It seems to me like using a Turtle will be very risky thanks to how incredibly slowly they regen. Some of them take like 10 seconds to regen to full in borderlands 2, that will be even longer on Moze thanks to her boosted shield capacity from Vladof Ingenuity, Phalanx Doctrine, and Thin Red Line. How in the world are you going to avoid taking damage for like 14 seconds on TVHM, where the enemies are crazy accurate. Basically the only feasible way to get your Tenacious Defense safety net back mid-combat with a Turtle Shield will be to hop into Iron Bear with the Full Can of Whop-Ass skill, and you can only use Iron Bear once every 120 seconds.

It seems to me like you’ll want to get a Tediore shield instead, with one of those and Behind the Iron Curtain you’ll be back to 100% to Proc Tenacious defense again in like 2 seconds or less. Assuming that Tenacious Defense acts as a free health gate like I assume it does of course.