I’m wondering what exactly happens when I shield myself.
I still seem to get attacked, but I just don’t lose any rating points. (I’m assuming these attacks are retaliations.)
What happens to my attacker when he attacks me shielded? Does he still get rating points, and I just don’t lose any?
What happens if I get attacked and the attacker loses? Would I then get no rating points?
Some are retaliations, but I think it does occasionally put you into other people’s attack queue, but not as often as when unshielded.
Yes.
You gain points still, and the attacker loses points. It’s quite rare for people to genuinely lose on offense though.
Not so rare vs. Daken and Thor 
Hulk eat Thor for breakfast, then clean teeth with puny Daken.
I suspect most defense wins are actually game crashes.
If I can lose on offense to oBW + Thor or a bunch of 141 dudes with some bad bad luck, then I sure hope other people are able of such feats too. Otherwise (game crashes only) sad panda.
Oh, it definitely happens, especially against a board shaker or AP stealer. A cascade can screw you over for good. From my experience I’d say at least half my losses are game crashes. And when I check rosters when I win on defense, I have to assume some of them are from crashes too.
I’m playing on PC and my game has never crashed no matter what I stream or how many browser windows I have open.
I have seen strange behavior when logging in or between matches where it tries to send me back to the lobby. But I just relog. Not a crash mid-match.
That’s not to say other people aren’t crashing, but this game seems pretty stable to me.
Or the freak cascade situation where the AI can go on for an infinite duration until one of your characters is dead, the 2nd has 100 health left leaving you with just the 3rd to fight with.
super buffed thors are the reason behind most of my offensive losses.
When shielded you also can’t be targeted.
Note though that people who had you as a target either through random chance or queued retaliations already have you as a target. You just can’t be targeted by anyone new.
I’ve lost to a modern black widow modern storm combo before. It was a verrrrry slow loss, but once widow has a 5 blue stun ticking over and storm is using red and green in a jungle environment you are cactus.
also it happened to me twice so far. i got shielded and after 5-8 minutes i got attacked and i LOST points. stupid but life goes on. i have wrote to support but still no answer
At the moment, I’m still building up roster space (currently at 24) so I don’t have the HP to spend on shields. I was around 800 pts in LoT before getting a string of attacks which took me to 600+. Ended up placing top 25 instead of top 5. Wonder if I should have just used the shield instead.
If you were up to 800, yeah you should have shielded. The higher you go, the more points you are worth so people will hit you instead of someone else. And your retaliations won’t give you back as many points as you lost from losing to a lower-rated player.