Okay so, I recently wanted to run a sword and buckler (round shield), medium armour DPS build, because I love the aesthetic of it, until I realised it’s just simply unviable due to the following disadvantage:
A sword has a smaller attribute bonus than other weapons, to compensate for the attribute bonus from a shield; a sword and shield with the same item level as a great axe (for example), which gives +20 STR will grant +10 STR each.
The issue is, the shield only gives the bonus when it is actually drawn together with the sword, which means if it’s sheathed, you will only get the attribute bonus from the sword, which is about half of any other weapon you could have in that slot instead. Similarly, the shield will not grant it’s armour bonus unless it’s drawn.
(Even when you open your inventory, and your character sheaths their weapon, you lose the attribute bonus from the shield. If you open your inventory with the sword and shield equipped, your attribute points are lower than if you were to press K and check the attributes tab.)
In addition to this, you always suffer the weight penalty of the shield, meaning you have to sacrifice other armour parts and settle for lighter ones with less armour to stay below a certain threshold. (This doesn’t affect tanks as they go for heavy armour regardless.)
All in all, it is far more beneficial to equip any other weapon, always get the bonus attribute points and not have to sacrifice armour. The only good side of sword and shield is that it has two taunt abilities (all other weapons have one or none) and that you get more perks than with any other weapon.
Personally, I think the shield should always grant its attribute bonus, like any other equipped weapon, and always grant it’s armour bonus to compensate for affecting your load weight. That will also make lighter shields more viable, as right now only tanks use shields and they only use tower shields.
Let me know what you all think!
(EDIT: last paragraph, I had another idea that fixed the flaw in my original idea.)