Massive melee damage.
You almost always have the bonus
EXPLOSIONS
With the right play-style, you won’t actually kill your friends
But if you want to, you can
I’ve been running Sniper Zero recently, but I do miss me some Thumping.
With the exception of Rough Rider on Krieg, I like the Blockade on most every other character. Good overall stats and significant damage reduction makes it arguably the best all-around shield in the game.
Gaige:
Black Hole.
Even if the Nova does not do much damage, the singularity it creates allows for some fun crowd control.
Krieg:
Rough Rider.
Almost a no-brainer for him when you don’t want to focus on Roid shields. No capacity means that his skills benefit alot from this shield.
Its the balance I played with the big pangolin ones but the delay and rate were so so it never really recharged, and the quick one had so much less capacity that it seemed to be missing the point of a tanky shield. The bandit just checked all the boxes nicely. I even inc did a SPS (shield per second ) formula and the bandit was well on top and backed up with game play.
I have Antagonist for everyone but Krieg (RR for him) but other shields are situational. I love the The Transformer for dealing with shock damage dealing enemies and a good absorb shield always comes in handy. For certain bosses (i.e. the Ancient Dragons and Badassasaurus), I’ll use an Evolution. I’ve just gotten an at level Blockade and gave it to Axton- I intend to try it out soon…
My Axton uses an Antagonist, because for some reason having three sources of slag (Ant, Florentine, Turrets) makes sense in my head. Aside from that, it’s a pretty easy shield to get if you don’t mind resetting for perfect parts. I’ve also generally liked adaptive shields.
My Krieg is all about the Rough Rider right now. That thing is excellent, and pretty easy to farm as well. I might try out the Love Thumper eventually though, as I have no intentions of doing OP levels.
Haven’t made up my mind about what direction I’m taking my Maya… Plenty of time to decide on that later though.
I use the Punchee with Zer0 because the HoT is a pain to farm. And I dont like the Love Thumper when runing Gunslinger/Hybrid.
Edit: I used to run the Big Boom Blaster with Gaige before I found the Nth Degree and Antagonist synergy. It is a solid and easy farm shield. I still use it when I need some elemental resistence against Raids.