Top 5 DPS Shields for Amon

The first shield we can talk about is the good old Firewerks shield. It’s a legendary shield that can drop from more or less the very first boss you fight in the game - Splashzone, over in the Fadefields.

The special effect for this shield will make it clear why it’s so useful. On kill, the Firewerks shield will spawn a bundle of homing missiles that track and detonate on enemies. Not only is it easily farmable and obtainable in the early game, but it also scales very nicely into the endgame as well - and is fully capable of killing trash mobs on their own. Much like any shield in the game, it can roll with its own firmware and the choice you make here is entirely dependant on the build you end up running.

Firewerks use cases

While this shield doesn’t provide a whole lot of direct synergies - unlike some other shields I’ll talk about soon - what makes this shield so useful is how easily it can be dropped onto a build for a little extra damage and mobbing capabilities. A build like my Swiss Army Knife Amon works best with a shield like the Firewerks due to its versatility and its lower levels of gear reliance to get optimal results.

The next shield worth talking about is the Heavyweight armour shield. Yet another legendary shield that you can get for yourself from the Vile Prototype mini-boss in Lictor’s Black site (Terminus Range).

The Heavyweight special effect very heavily leans itself into a build that relies on melee damage, as it’s special effect consumes an armour segment on melee hit and provides a 100% bonus to true melee damage (and 50% to other melee sources) and to add to this further, when the Heavyweight is empty, you get a flat 50% bonus to melee damage. The special effect can be procced from any melee related attack, and not just Amon’s default melee strike. So things like his Onslaughteraction skill and slippy grenade ordnance can all get the bonuses from the Heavyweights special attack.

Heavyweight use cases

From an Amon specific point of view, the Heavyweight shield allows additional melee damage scaling if skill points are sunk into other areas of his tree and a build is lacking direct buffs to melee damage. The Heavyweight can act as a bit of a band-aid for this. On the flipside, the Heavyweight can act as a way to elevate any melee focused build for Amon. A standard run of the mill melee build using Onslaughter and rocket punch synergises well. But let’s peel back the layers a bit and look into some deeper synergies.

A Vengeance focused build using the Shatterwight class mod can make your forgewaves which typically deal ordnance and action skill damage can now also scale with melee damage as well once you slot in the Shatterwight COM. The implication of this? Your forgewaves will now benefit from your standard melee skill bonuses in Amon’s trees, but now will also get the additional melee damage bonuses from the Heavyweight shield as well. And what does this mean? You know get a forgewave that can dip into 3 different damage sources. Ordnance, Action Skill AND Melee - and the Heavyweight shield plays into a playstyle like this perfectly. In fact, for a Shatterwight forgewave build, the Heavyweight is one of the best shields you can equip for a build like that.

And THESE are the synergies you should be looking for when making your Amon builds. Looking for ways to add in additional damage scaling sources is how you elevate an average Amon build to a GREAT one.

The Protean Cell is the next shield on the list and is obtainable from the Bio-Bulkhead boss in the Fadefields.

The protean cell is a very interesting shield and can lend itself towards a build that is looking to increase shock damage, or add in an extra elemental damage source in the form of shock. The protean cell is an energy shield that upon slamming the ground, starts to drain your shields but in turn, gives you 40% bonus shock damage. Now our good friend Girthquake (who's Mobalytics profile I'll link here, and a very strong build he made using the shield on his YouTube channel here), found that this bonus damage applies to not just bullets you fire, but also your DoTs as well - which makes it a huge bonus to massively increase your elemental damage.

Protean Cell use cases

While the Watts 4 Dinner shield gives a persistent shock damage bonus, it’s only applied to the bullets you fired and nothing else. This makes the Protean Cell a more high risk higher reward type of shield.

And why is there a risk? Well.. the Protean Cell basically drains your entire shield capacity in order to give you the massive shock damage buff, and in this game - having no shield makes you a prime target for every mob in the game. And if you haven't invested in significant amounts of lifesteal and health regeneration, you will die. very very quickly.

But in saying that, that’s not to say that this shield isn’t good. In fact, it’s one of the best boss killing shields Amon has access to. The global damage buff that this shield provides is significant as some of Amon's strongest builds revolves around DoT damage. So when you add a shield into the mix that can apply bonus damage to all the DoTs that Amon can throw out - you get a very spicy combination.

Speaking of Watts 4 Dinner that’s next up on the list. The Watts can be obtained from Origo who is the primordial guardian for the Terminus Range Vault.

Like I briefly touched on just then - the special effect for the Watts4Dinner is 2 things. the first effect is that on hit, it has a chance to drop a booster that can provide a small amount of overshield, and the second effect is much more meaty. When an overshield is active - the Watts gives you a 25% bonus shock damage to your projectiles.

Watts 4 Dinner use cases

While this may seem underwhelming in comparison to the Protean Cell we just spoke about (since the protean applies to DoTs as well) - the Watts fills in a different requirement. One for mobbing. Because the Watts provides overshield and THEN gives you bonus shock damage, it’s significantly more reliable for mobbing as opposed to the Protean - which drains your shields constantly.

For an optimal configuration, swapping between the Watts and the Protean depending on the situation may end up being your best choice - but once again, this all is contingent on the build you’re running.

For a build focusing on mobbing, you’ll be hard pressed to find a use care for the protean when you can just equip the Watts and spec into a skill or two that provides overshield in Amon's trees. Thankfully, you have a few choices.

Each tree has its own overshield generation skill as seen below:

All of the triggers for these skills are easily achievable, and because all these overshield bonuses are % based of the damage you dealt, even a single point (or two) is enough to provide you with constant overshield to keep the bonus shock damage from the Watts active at all times.

Finally, we have the Super Soldier shield. A returning legendary from BL3 with more or less the same effect.

This time around, it’s a dedicated drop from Vile Lictor - and it’s special effect is that when the energy shield is full - you gain increased fire rate, movement speed and ammo regen. And this ammo regen ALSO applies to your ordnance as well, making it incredibly synergistic with a heavy ordnance focused build. As an another added bonus, when the Super Soldier fills to max capacity, you gain an overshield as well, which can add to your overall survivability.

Super Soldier use cases

Now while the ammo regen is very useful - and should not be underestimated, the movement speed is also quite synergistic with Amon. Reason being is that it can directly add to the Bullet Train specialisation which provides gun damage based on how fast you’re moving.

This Bullet Train gun damage bonus can then feed into other specialisations like I Am A Gun and Bear Arms, which give Skill damage and Melee damage. Both of which are ideal stats for Amon builds, depending on the build that you’re running. Some nice scaling can be obtained from Super Soldier for little effort.

Speccing into skills like shield recharge rate and having passive stats on your gear that do the same can help maintain that constant movement speed bonus which in turn ties into giving Amon additional melee damage, ordnance damage AND action skill damage, assuming you pick up all the relevant specialisations.

But that rounds out the list for what I think are the 5 most optimal shields for your Amon builds. Having one of each will provide you with massive utility and build crafting potential which at the end of the day - is what we want.

Take notes!

The core concept I want you guys to take away from this is the idea of looking deeper into things. Surface level synergies are not enough to make a highly impactful Amon build. Looking into deeper synergies like for example, the movement speed buff from Super Soldier shield giving you melee damage bonuses as a result. OR combining the Heavyweight Shield AND a Shatterwight class mod to make a hard hitting forgewave build. Things like these are what will give your builds that extra punch they need to.

With all that said and done, I hope you guys found something useful out of this. If you aren’t already, please consider subscribing to my YouTube channel where I’ll be posting more in depth guides like this for anything Amon related. Take care and I’ll catch you guys in the next one. Cya!