Been fiddling with double stout shield builds for laning with random gold.
It only just occurred to me after all this time that lane creeps don't do more than 20 damage most of the time (they have a range of damage, something like 17 - 24). With two stout shields, your probability of blocking 20 damage is 84%. This means that 84% of the creep harass damage doesn't actually occur. So suppose you get attacked about 5 times by a lane creep and you block 4 of the attacks, you would have negated 100 damage easily. At the early point in the game it's quite literally 84% physical damage resistance, so only 16% of physical damage affects you, and that 16% will be reduced by your armour even more.
Why is this useful knowledge?
It's because I play tanky super level 1 heroes like Ursa, Slardar, Spirit Breaker, etc. all like crazy right click machines right from the box. The biggest source of damage that early in the game is not from the heroes but from the creeps and tower (heroes will be trying to run away). So if I remove it to just a 16% chance of taking damage, I'm nearly immortal in the early game. Especially combined with the crazy amounts of starting armour all those guys get.
It would be impossible to lose the lane as I can walk right next to enemies and punch em in the face while taking almost no damage at all.