Health and Shield Gates

We have two damage gates in the game. When your shields hit zero, for a small duration you become invulnerable to damage preventing any health damage from taking place. Similarly, when your health gets below 5% you become invulnerable to damage for a short time. The duration of these gates change based on difficulty and they are listed below:

Multiplayer
- Bronze 0.5 seconds
- Silver 0.25 seconds
- Gold 0.1 seconds
- Platinum 0.01 seconds

Singleplayer
- Narrative 1.0 second
- Casual 0.75 seconds
- Normal 0.5 seconds
- Hardcore 0.25 seconds
- Insanity 0.1 seconds

There
is also a cooldown on both gate mechanics, preventing you from becoming invulnerable too often. You can only get the benefits of the shield gate once every 4 seconds, and once every 3 seconds for the health gate. This means that if your shields hit zero on Bronze, for example, you become invulnerable for 0.5 seconds, but if your shields get restored through a Geth Turret, a Volus Shield Boost, Stim Pack, or some other means, and your shields go down again after the 0.5 second window and within 4 seconds you will not get a second window of invulnerability.

None of the health and shield gate values or mechanics have changed since we shipped the game.

The following enemy attacks ignore the player health and shield gate mechanics, which means they can instantly kill you.
- Any sync kill
- Enemy grenades
- Possessed Abomination explosions

Some of our new multiplayer abilities, like the Volus Shield Boost (on the caster only), and Stim Pack, make the player invulnerable for a short duration after the cast, but this is separate from the shield gate mechanic.