Elite Buff: Shielded 4

Internal engine status effect. Standard elite variant of Shielded at tier 4 (strongest). Grants the elite enemy 9 Shield stacks that refresh at the start of each round, at the cost of -20% max health.

The tier 4 Shield is the largest for standard elite enemies, requiring significant damage each round to punch through before dealing health damage. Damage-over-time effects like Burn, Bleed, and Poison bypass Shield entirely, making them strong counters. Marked also causes physical attacks to ignore Shield.

Since Shield refreshes each round, focus all damage within a round to maximize health damage after breaking the shield. Spreading damage across rounds wastes effort against the refreshing Shield. The -20% max health trade-off means the elite is squishier once past the Shield. Boss variants use higher Shield values (4/8/12/16 by chapter tier).