Damage block

Damage block is a mechanic that reduces physical attack damage a unit takes by a flat amount. Most damage block abilities are chance-based and passive.

Mechanics
Damage block reduces any physical damage a unit takes from attacks or from cleave, with the exception of damage dealt by the attacks of ward-type units. Damage block does not trigger against physical spell damage, with the exception of the spells listed below. Unlike armor, damage block reduces a fixed amount of damage, instead of a percentage.

When damage block triggers, it blocks damage before other damage reducing effects do. This means that the higher the unit's armor is, the less effective damage block gets. See final attack damage for the complete calculation.

All chance-based sources of damage block use pseudo-random distribution.

Blocked spell damage
The following spells' damage is blocked by damage block.

1 Only returned/reflected physical damage is blocked. Magical and pure damage is not blocked.

Visual feedback
When a damage block occurs, a ocre-colored negative number pops up on the blocking unit, with a shield icon on the right side of the number. This number shows the exact amount of damage blocked.

Stacking
When having multiple sources of damage block, and both trigger on the same damage instance, the damage block with the higher block value takes priority, while the lower one does nothing. This means their proc chances stack (except for multiple ), working independently from each other, but their effects do not stack, resulting in a diminishing behaviour.

Example: When having two, the chance of blocking damage becomes:
 * 1 - ( × ) = %

When having one Stout Shield and one, the chance of blocking damage becomes:
 * chance for Vanguard to proc, and ×  = % chance for Stout Shield to proc

This is because half of the time Stout Shield procs at the same time as Vanguard does, but since Vanguard has the higher block values, Vanguard gets prioritized, effectively negating half of the Stout Shield procs.