Just sayin', but 1h no shield get none of the 1h bonuses besides sexy animations.
Lies, 1h, 1h/2h and 2h wielded weapons all have a different modifier for how much the weight of a carried weapon decreases your movement speed. 1h has the best modifier, which added to the fact that the weapons are mostly very light anyway, makes you have a lot more movement speed. Not top speed as much as strafe speed, which is extremely important and its effect should not be underestimated. 1h no shield is a class for the exquisite anyway, so it does not need a buff. Besides, on the duel and siege servers a 1h no shield is far from underpowered.
On topic:
There is a lot of people here that just need to learn to play. 1h has amazing animations, suited like no other to fuck up someone quickly in a 1 vs 1, while also having extremely good reach. There are so much shielders I see daily which only scratch the surface of the tricks and possibilities 1h has to offer, people get lazy from having a shield. The right swing is amazingly long and does not glance easily at all. Yes, it is slow, but if you use it with proper footwork that only increases its amazing reach. The overhead is extremely fast and confusing, cause it resembles the leftswing. The leftswing is extremely fast, can hit very early in the animation and hits up high. Stab used to be amazing, I am curious how the overhead and stab fare now on EU_1.
I recommend any of the people here who claims that 1h has bad animations, to go 1h without a shield for a while and really think about what kind of tricks you can come up with.
I don't know if the term 'shielders' included hoplites, but I agree. Hoplites are the strongest battle class. Amazing damage output, counters cav and ranged. If played properly it does decently in a 1 vs 1. Not a single class allows me to affect the chances of victory of my team like hoplite does.