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Warframe’s rich mechanical meta gives an abundance of ways to build your Frame, but as you progress through content, survivability becomes more and more of a pressing issue. Whether it’s high-level Elite Sanctuary Onslaught, Steel Path or Sorties, understanding how to use shield gating can give your Warframe survivability for any situation. Shield gating is a technique in that relies on the brief period of invulnerability that every Warframe gets when their shields break.

When a Warframe’s shield hits 0, any damage they took over the shield is nullified rather than spilling onto their health bar, and they become very briefly invulnerable. This prevents players from losing their entire shield and health pool to a single hit, and means that less resilient Frames can’t be taken out by one very hefty attack (except in the case of damage that bypasses shields, like toxin). Until relatively recently, shield gating relied on having low shields that dropped to 0 and recharged rapidly.



Players used an item called a Decaying Dragon Key to essentially make Warframes invulnerable with the right build. In October 2023, changes to the shield system rendered a lot of shield gating builds and advice less useful. The invulnerability period is now calculated based on the amount of shields that the Warframe has when their shields break.

If a Warframe has 1150 shields (not including overshields), they get 2.5 seconds of invulnerability, and it scales down from there based on the amount o.

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