Possible ways or/and:
- Forcefield back
Well, that's not neccesery, huscalr's/heavy round shield gives quite good protetcion against ranged.
- Bigger width of shields back
Up. It's more about shield choice.
- More HP for shields (they should get broken by unbalanced axes not by simple 2h swords)
Maybe some shields needs some blancing between hit points and resistance, but I guess it won't happen soon, and it's not any kind of priority I guess.
- Make shields have less weight
That would make light equiped shileders with huscarls OP.
- Make shield skill every 2 levels instead of 3
There is significant difference between 6 and 7 lvl shield skill, imagine 15/21 build with 10 shield skill would take on his shield shitloads of hits.
- Increase the angels of attack for 1h
Yay with latest changes that devs made to the game mechanics that would lead to zillions of teamkills, with some good footwork and weapon with ~100 length you can compasate missing weapon reach comparing to 2h/pole, but it's not that easy, tho.
- Increase 1h cut damage across the board and lower pierce and blunt damage for that. That is very important because of silly armor and gauntlets looms with armor value around 80!
Well, from my own experience anything with less than 6PS is unplayable, 7PS is something that a shielder really need, with it you can quite easly kill whose "tincans".
- Make all shields take only one slot, that way 1h + huscarl shield + war spear would allow infantry to defend themselves.
There are pretty good 1 slot shields instead, it was good change to overall balance IMHO (making shields with weight over 8 2 slots).
Basiclly shielders are fine as they are now, other classes needs some more balancing, not 1H.