Shields

Shields are a special sub-class of weapons which focus on protecting the player from damage rather than killing enemies.

Passive effects
Carrying a shield causes a force field to be granted for 0.5 seconds whenever the player takes damage. This barrier absorbs most types of damage while active (the exception is damage-over-time from status effects such as poison and darkness); however, force fields, both from shields and from other sources, reduce rally effect health gain by 65% while active, making it more difficult to recover recently-lost health before the rally effect expires.

Active effects
Holding a shield's assigned button deploys it in front of the player after a 0.37-second windup. Attacks originating from in front of the shield which hit the player are reduced by the percentage specified on the shield (usually 75%) before being further reduced by other damage-reducing effects, and block damage, listed as non-critical damage, is dealt to enemies using melee attacks.

Tapping a shield's assigned button instead causes the player to attempt a parry with the shield. If no attacks arrive within the parry window, the player loses the ability to block or parry again for 0.6 seconds. However, if a non-shockwave attack or a bomb comes into contact with the shield during the parry window, any damage from the attack is nullified completely, the ability to parry subsequent attacks is preserved, and additional effects occur depending on the nature of the attack:
 * Melee attackers take parry damage (indicated on the shield as a critical damage value).
 * Ranged attacks are absorbed, then shot out as a forward arrow (like those produced by the Front Arrow affix) which deals 80 base damage.
 * Bombs are thrown forward at great speed, exploding for 90 base damage.
 * Explosions are absorbed without producing any retaliatory attacks.
 * Purulent Zombie's eggs will turn into three Biters, which will attack any enemies.

Note: While using a parry-capable shield, the player will automatically parry attacks that land within the first 0.2 seconds after starting to raise the shield as long as the shield's assigned button is still being held down at the time of the attack landing.

Effect scaling
Block and parry damage outputs of shields are usually increased based on the player's Survival stat, with some having dual scaling from Tactics/Survival or Brutality/Survival. The absorbed percentage of damage while blocking, however, can only be increased by the presence of the Shield Absorb affix (7% extra absorbed damage while held up).