What is the point of Turtle Shields?

Borderlands: The Pre-Sequel BL: TPS Gameplay Discussion (Spoilers!)
#1

So, I keep seeing Turtle Shields on lists of best gear for characters. But I have to wonder, why would one ever use one? Yes, I get that they have the highest capacity. But that benefit would seem to be negated by the health penalty. I can kinda see why for Nisha, lowering her health does allow Order stacks to build faster. Even then, the further down L&O you go, the more ways she gets to gain stacks, I already gain stacks faster from a quick slam than from taking damage.

Plus, going with a turtle shield means giving up the benefits of other specialized shields, like amp damage, absorb chance and roid damage. Or a Cryo Spike shield to freeze those pesky melee enemies that manage to flank.

So really, why do these things keep popping up on best gear? I just curious about this.

#2

Health gating, supposedly. And shield buffs. Since it takes 2 hits (at the very least) to die, the thought is that it’s easier to regain your health back up to at least half if you have lower max HP. Despite the fact that most health regeneration is based on percentages, not flat rates. I dunno, I don’t purposefully employ health gating and vastly prefer adaptive shields.

I guess it depends on the character but if you take the Shield of Ages (highest capacity shield in game) and get all your shield buffs, it becomes quite powerful. Also, since turtle shields are kind of general purpose, they work for a variety of builds.

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#3

Shield buff skills mostly.

They also usually have the best capacity overall (including the health penalty)
They also fill up by themselves, which the health portion you lose would not do.

#4

I like Turtles on characters that have shield capacity restoring skills, like Wilhelm or Athena. For example, Wilhelm’s skill Energize can restore 80% of shield capacity (when boosted by the Celestial COM). Since Turtle Shields have such high capacity the percentage based restoration effect will restore a very large amount of shield capacity allowing you to tank a stupid amount of damage.

#5

For health gating and a few characters have ways of keeping them up or preventing their fall to begin with. Both Athena and Wilhelm have ways of making shields more robust or recharge quicker which in turn makes Turtle Shields into mobile fortresses.

While Adaptive shields are nice the health can be stripped away very quickly, especially if you are exposed to incendiary weapons and DoT in an oxygen environment. So the health reduction is not that big of a handicap.

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#6

Yes. I must say that the Shield of Ages + Eddie = tankitude. The long delay doesn’t even matter with Jack’s percentage-based shield recharges + Eddie’s occasional instant recharge. Plus Jack has shield-capacity boosting (also percentage-based) as well.