Again this discussion, come on. Either you are covered, slow as shit, do not oneshot things or you just grab a weapon without shield and voila. You should not be on same level as pikemen/spearmen without shield, as you got the cover advantage, you should be slower, cause you are carrying big ass shield.
The point of support class is guess what? Support. Not racking up kills. I think you might have chosen bad class for your char if you feel other way around. If you want to rack kills, drop the damn shield and go ahead ramboing as the others.
And to be honest, there is nothing more annoying than like 2-3 hoplites following the main blob, forces you to keep downblock, they spin around like fucking helicopters in order to land a kill, and i have already met some that were able to hit me thru downblock due to that fucking spin bullshit.
Hoplites are fine imho, i would not mind giving them awlpike back though.