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Shield Mastery is a passive power in Mass Effect 3. It is available only to the N7 Paladin DLC character. It is similar to Fitness.

Power Ranks Edit

Boost health, shields/barriers, melee damage, and durability.

Increase health and shield bonuses by 10%.

Increase melee damage bonus by 20%.

Melee Damage

Increase melee damage bonus by 30%.

Durability

Increase health and shield bonuses by 15%.

Shield Durability

Increase the damage the omni-shield withstands before collapsing by 50%.

Shield Recharge

Decrease shield-recharge delay by 15%.

Fire Shield

Add a flame effect to your omni-shield. Your shield melees will burn enemies and are highly effective against armor.

Adds a fire effect to impacted targets that does 50% additional damage over 5 seconds.

Cryo Shield

Add a freezing effect to your omni-shield that can chill or freeze enemies.

Snap freeze unprotected enemies.
Slow shield and armored targets by 30%.
Weaken enemy armor by 50% for 5 seconds.

The Rank 6 evolutions give your melee attacks burning/freeze attributes. This means that you can use your melee attacks to setup Tech Combos (Fire/Cryo Explosion), although the need to first melee an enemy to setup the combo and the need to follow this up with a lethal detonator greatly limit its usefulness. Note that your Fire/Cryo melee attacks cannot be used to detonate combos.
- In multiplayer, due to a recent update, Fire and Cryo Explosions do not require death of the unit to activate (Power Combos) greatly increasing the effectiveness of the N7 Paladin Sentinel.
Fire Shield leaves a burning effect on the enemy, however following it up immediately with Snap Freeze will extinguish this effect. If you plan on using Fire Shield to setup a Tech Combo, you'll need to make sure that your Snap Freeze will be lethal (i.e., you light up an enemy with the Fire Shield and then repeatedly use Snap Freeze until you trigger a Tech Combo). To guarantee a Tech Combo, weaken the enemy with guns before firing Snap Freeze to ensure that it is lethal.
Note that, when the Rank 6 evolution of Shield Mastery (Cryo Shield) is combined with the Rank 6 evolution of Snap Freeze (Damage & Weakness) this leads to a 100% weakening of armored targets for 5 seconds. This can be especially useful on harder difficulties where boss level enemies like Geth Primes and Cerberus Atlases have much more armor and require more effort to be defeated.