Reasons not to use Sword and Shield:
- Shields don’t give stats when the sword is sheathed. This means Sword and Shield cannot be effectively used as a second weapon in ANY combo, because each time you perform a weapon swap, you actually lose attributes and lose unlocked attribute nodes. This is especially important in end game where you actually need to have ALL or mostly all legendary items to achieve maximum number of node breakpoints with the help of best food.
Solution: Remove the attributes from shield and double the attributes of sword instead OR make shields actually apply stats as long as a sword is equipped in any weapon slot
- Shields weight a LOT, despite being considered a WEAPON. Why on earth shields add to your weight when it’s basically the other half of your sword. What is the reasoning for this other than to just screw up potential medium and light S+S builds for no apparent reason?
How come a huge warhammer adds nothing to your weight, but fighting with sword and shield does, while overall balance wise we can see a strive to balance out all the weapons across the board and Sword AND Shield is considered a WEAPON. Or at least should be considered a weapon, because we don’t really get anything from having to carry additional weight and being forced to either wear lesser armor or be forced into heavy at all times.
Solution: Just treat shield as a weapon! Remove the weight from it. It doesn’t make sense that holding a greataxe doesn’t increase the carry weight but holding a sword and shield does. It just unnecessarily complicates builds and pidgeonholes S+S users into heavy unless they are ready to give up armor resistances in order to gain mediocre damage on an already underpowered weapon pvp wise.
- Having stats spread across Sword and Shield unnecessarily gimps SS users, because in order to max out SS attributes you need not one but TWO legendary pieces of gear. This also means that if you are unlucky enough to not roll a two 600’s with two attributes each then you will be at loss of actually FOUR attributes points instead of TWO so it makes maxing out attributes with SS even harder.
This is an inconsistency bug. There’s simply zero reason to use sword and shield if you plan on swapping to any other weapon for more than a skill cast or two. Not to mention that shield added weight is unnecessary punishing when it comes to planning out our medium or light loadout.