Special Effects

While Amplify Shield is full, the next shot of your gun drains a part of shield and gains increased gun damage.

Usage & Description

An amplify shield is essentially the opposite of a roid shield type. When filled, amplify shields add a bonus amount of Amp Damage to the next shot (called an Amp Shot) fired from any projectile weapon, at a cost of a certain amount of shield damage (the shield's Amp Shot Drain). They are thus well suited to longer-ranged character builds where they can be allowed to recharge between shots and there is little risk of taking damage.

As rarity increases, the amp damage increase, while shield recharge delay and amp shot drain decrease.

Notable Variants

Borderlands 2

• The Bee – Legendary amp shield with low capacity, high amp damage and zero amp drain. Increased recharge rate and recharge delay.

Borderlands: The Pre-Sequel

• Rerouter – Legendary amp shield with high amp damage, high amp drain, and heals for an equal amount of amp damage when an amp shot is fired.

Notes

• As of November 14th, 2012, Gearbox released Patch 1.2.0 for Borderlands 2 which added a balance that caused Amp Damage to be divided evenly among multiple projectiles rather than added to each, and added a bug fix so Amp Damage no longer applies to every round remaining in a thrown Tediore weapon, significantly reducing this shield type's former effectiveness for close-range character builds. Splash damage from explosions caused by a weapon's projectiles do receive the full amp bonus though, regardless of how many projectiles are fired, and guns that fire multiple unlisted projectiles (Unkempt Harold, Sand Hawk) or extra shotgun pellets added by accessories will have full amp damage bonus from amp shields.
• The common amplify shields is obtained randomly from any suitable loot source.
• The amp damage is added to the weapon's base damage and adapt its existing element. This provides an advantage on elemental weapons against enemies weak to that specific element, and weapons with high critical hit damage over enemies that have vulnerable critical hit locations.
• Except for The Bee, it is possible to stack the amp damage to the gun in Salvador's left hand during Gunzerking. By loading and quiting to the main menu multiple times, the game adds an instance of the amp damage to the current game session on top of the amp damage from the shield itself (i.e. loading in 3 times with an amp damage of 1,000 adds 3,000 to the shield for a total of 4,000 amp damage). If done enough times, the game's framerate will experience significant lag when the shield is fully recharged.
• Amp becomes a shield payload in Borderlands 3. Amped gun will have a purple light effect at its muzzle, and amped shot will leave a purple trail. Amp also provide a percentage bonus instead of certain value.