Shield

Shields are not to be confused with armor and magic resistance bonuses.

Shields are a temporary increase in the target's health, they will absorb all incoming damage before the target's health is damaged. They will do so for a set amount of damage (shield strength) or until their duration run out (shield duration). They are marked by an extra white bar in the champion's health bar.

Shields can increase a unit's current health over its maximum, but they do not count as maximum health. Before receiving damage, shields take into account the unit's resistances (armor or magic resistance). The shield strength can be increased with some items and runes.

Shield types

Shields are classified by the type of damage they absorb.

Normal shields: They absorb all types of damage (physical, magic and true), and appear white.
Magic shields: They only absorb magic damage, and appear purple. Champions with magic shields take direct damage to their health from physical and true damage.
Physical shields: They only absorb physical damage, and appear orange. Champions with physical shields take direct damage to their health from magic and true damage.

Others

The following are not considered a type of shield:

Spell shields allow you to completely block the effect of one single ability.
Some abilities can be seen as shields such as Leona's Eclipse grant armor, magic resistance or damage reduction when activated, but these don't give any temporary health.

Shield as scaling

Runes

Shield Bash

Normal shields

Champion abilities

Ally-targeted

User only

Items