My two cents on the Evo Shield after one play session: You're going to lose a lot more often early game being down 25 shield than you are going to win late game for having 25 more shield.
Evo Shield is something to pick up off a dead body if it's already evolved to purple. I've really only decided to pick it up if I have a Charge Rifle for safe chip damage. Even then, doesn't seem worth the risk or investment.
I too have only had one play session since the update, and this is mostly my thoughts too. It's really not worth it until it gets up to tier 3 purple.
I think two things that could really help it would be lessening the damage requirements to move up levels by somewhere between 25-50%. Then, I think they could stand to be so when you proc the next tier, it would auto-regenerate shields, and perhaps not like an immediate fill, but the gradual fill akin to Halo's shield regeneration. This could make for some really interesting situations where someone is wearing one in a fight, is weak, but knows if they can just hyper-aggro to land more damage, then suddenly they are ready for more action. If they did something like this, they'd definitely have to make the "shield restore" visual effect more noticeable. There's already an effect that shows when people repair their armor, but if they made the Evo Shield recover at tier moves, I think they'd need to make it more standout, especially from a distance. And maybe give it its own distinct sound effect also. Think the Halo shield regeneration effects.
I think this could be a good way to make them more worthwhile, but then, it might swing them a bit too hard to too good. Not sure. I do think they are interesting on the whole though.
As it is right now, Level 1 -> 2 takes 100 dmg. 2 -> 3 takes 300 additional damage. Then 3 -> 4 takes 500 additional damage. Changing the damage requirements to 75, 250, and 400 might be a bit better. Picking up one at the start of a game and having to do 900 damage just to see an extra 25 hp at endgame has to be quite a tough ask for a large number of the playerbase. And even then, I still almost think I'd rather have gold armor with 50% faster heals than 25 hp extra in fight onsets.
