I've played 1h+shield for quite a while now, and for a long time I played as a warhammer+huscarl player. The huscarl+hammer build was nice but, often, I'd fall to pieces against a smart 2h/polearm. A huscarl shield is a shockingly heavy and slow device for blocking. Its apparent coverage is also undercut by its two blind spots which appear to be protected but which, in fact, aren't. LUBU, for example, could wrap is great long axe around my shield 80% of the time, and only when I consciously blocked every single hit he threw at my shield did I avoid this weakness. After many fights with LUBU I realized that this conscious blocking was tantamount to manual blocking his attacks. At that point I decided to stop fighting LUBU.
If you think the pick+huscarl build is overpowered you're wrong. Like all builds it has significant weaknesses and strengths. If you're hitting a Pick+Huscarl player straight on then you're playing to her strengths. If you're playing aggressively then you're also playing to her strengths. Huscarl+pick is slow, short range, and painfully weak against cavalry, long axes, and good spearmen. It's the most susceptible build to kicking and depends heavily on the hope that enemy will target the shield rather than the player. When fighting this sort of player it's best to either be quick and wrap around them (which is best done with light armour and some athletics), use an axe to coax them out of their defensive play, hit faster than them (the huscarl is slow, katana are not) and to backpeddle all the way to China servers. If possible, use a horse or find a pikeman to help you out. Many times I was bested by an inopportune poke from the side which my warhammer couldn't return in kind.
