i dunno.. to me that'd be both too much and not enough

Meaning that it's balanced ^^
It would give us some new stuff to discuss about, without giving away too much information at once.

From H0RSE's newest compendium:

So, when you shield a faster person, you will be able to follow them, even moving faster than normal, but it seems like it's just speed, not SMART.

following that quote it's only for a short time though, the speed-boost i mean

Still, it makes shiedling really useful to both the Heavy and the Light class in a hairy firefight, giving the Heavy speed to get out of the line of fire, and the Light - armor to soak up damage while running for cover. Gives a benefit to both individuals making use of it. Plus, from the "Turret-like" descriptor, it looks like once the heavy is locked on, he can turn and fire while the light pulls him along behind him.

That was just H0RSE's way of describing it, so you cant take the turret description as literal.

I'm surprised to see this is topic back up now and with an acceptable answer. :thumbsup:

From what i Gather from the media that i've consumed from brink and this forum page it appears this sheilding ability is more a tool for good old fasioned flanking manuvers and such.
you find them, you suppress them, you flank 'em then you finish them off.
However we now come back to the utility of this "Shield buff"
we come in this game packaged with three body variations; Light, Medium and Heavy.
to put them in context the featherweight, the balanced average joe and the walking tank- now ive seen a visual indicator of a "sprint boost" so i believe that this Shield does not alter the movement speed of anyone involved in the process. now we have some context of the utility of this skill in that the light and medium cant take as much damage as a heavy although i will assume that all classes could utalize it to keep key members in the fight (e.g. with engineers repairing the bot the light's shield could save valuable seconds of his life)
you could really come up with quite a few versitile reasons to have this skill:
-Save a light or have a light save another light (medic or other VIP's) from explosive devices to keep them in the fight and keeping people healed and such
-Keep enemy fire from pinning down the smaller weight classes from a position or SMART move they wish to preform/get to. (see top)
-Narrowly save an ally under fire while he gets to cover or finishes the shootout.
-give a few extra seconds so your operative can hack the command post for that sweet health boost.
etc.
now personaly i believe that their keeping the "No canned animations" as stated by Nikto and xShadowcat throughout.
Therefore this buff by process of elimination most likely will become an area of effect-single target buff. However the final product and further speculation as always- is yet to be seen.
DoneGotlt: nice to know that your easy to surprise, it will be usefull to me :wavey:

Well, since any buff will allow you to tether to someone (and get a speed boost if they are faster than you) for a short time, it seems obvious to me that this includes shielding someone. The only question I have is how long you are able to make that tether last. Due to the lack of canned animations, I can also reasonably assume that you can ditch the tether and take over controls at any point you want.

As far as uses, keeping anyone alive, especially lights and people with low life is an obvious one. Could also be used to keep the high priority classes alive, which would be medics in most cases; if you end up dieing to keep them alive, they can just throw you a revive syringe and you will be back to 100% health in a few seconds. Protecting people who are completing objectives is another obvious one, such as people hacking or planting/disarming a bomb. Shielding civilians that you have to escort would be a nice addition, but I'm not sure if you can.