Building for Volt’s Electric Shield

Long-time readers may have noticed that I have a… thing for Volt. My bright yellow electric space ninja has a lot of mileage on it. In Warframe, Volt and Volt Prime make up about 40% of total usage. The next closest Warframes after Volt Prime (30%) and Volt (10%) are Khora and Ivara, with about 15% between them.

During this time, I have written a LOT about both Volt and his builds. I have both a general-usage build and a 1-forma build for Sanctuary Onslaught. Both of these builds surround playing with specific parts of Volt’s kit. The general usage build (which I might update at some point) has a little bit of everything, so you don’t have any negative downsides. On the other hand, the Sanctuary Onslaught build is much more rigid. Since that build focuses on Discharge and its augment, other abilities are somewhat left behind.

However, there is one ability that I somewhat forget about: Electric Shield.

A build for Electric Shield technically already exists.

Most of the time, Electric Shield is often ignored. It’s a cool ability, but it often requires standing still to use it well. That being said, Electric Shield has a VERY unique perk. When you shoot through an Electric Shield, you do bonus Electric damage, and your critical damage is doubled. What makes Volt more unique though is the fact that it’s the only ability in Warframe that affects Operator Amps. Yes, the buffs for shooting through an Electric Shield also apply to our space kids.

This uniqueness actually makes Volt by far one of the best choices for Eidolon hunts. To the point that it’s good to have two Volts in your Eidolon-killing team. However, Volt itself actually doesn’t do much. It’s just there to give buffs to the rest of the team, particularly Operators.

There are no real builds for Electric Shield’s more general usage.

By this, I mean specifically building around Electric Shield, outside of Eidolon hunts. But do we even need a real build for Electric Shield? I already has quite a few interesting gimmicks. The shields stop anything aside from weapons with a built-in punch-through. Six Electric Shields can exist at the same time. You can pick up and run around with an Electric Shield, but your movement speed is decreased. An augment exists that allows other players to pick up Electric Shields.

These are all cool, but, well, mods don’t really affect Electric Shield. You can only reliably change how long an individual shield lasts. And if you are running a build for other abilities, Electric Shield will piggy back off them anyway. Both normal Speed builds and Discharge builds tend to lean towards high Duration anyway. And Duration is the ONLY thing you can mod on Electric Shield

That being said, there are some cool tricks you can do.

Something that is rarely mentioned is the fact that picking up and carrying an Electric Shield actually staggers enemies you run into. In fact, they actually get rag-dolled, which is always funny. You can also use Shock on Electric Shield, which makes enemies take damage as well as being rag-dolled.

Normally, when you pick up an Electric Shield, you are forced into secondary weapons. But only primary weapons are disabled. You can still melee through an Electric Shield, and use abilities, but most abilities aren’t affected by it. Bringing a great Secondary weapon with high crit chance is also a good way to make use of Electric Shield. My favourite trick however is that you can use an Electric Shield and an Archwing Gun at the same time. Not only is it badass, but it’s also really effective. And with how amazing the Mausalon is, the Electric Shield/Archgun combo is awesome.

At the end of the day, Electric Shield doesn’t do much with modding. But it has so many little quirks, that it’s worth using anyway. Regardless of your build.