I think shielders should provide a much better counter to ranged, I don't care how. I have never dared to pick any other shields than round shields because archers shoot past a shield on the side incredibly easily. Perhaps it is due to my preference for having no higher than 4 shield skill, but the one time I tried using a knightly kite, archers literally shot past my shield at about a 30 degree angle, which I think is ridiculous. 45 degree coverage should be the bare minimum in my opinion.
Then there are tons of other things that make shielders not the counter to ranged they should be. Crossbows penetrating shields, terrible mechanic. Very awkward and hard to trigger interrupt for walking into a ranged player allowing them to pull of gay ass face hug shots, should trigger much faster. Slow movement speed when blocking with a shield, shielders are unable to use their shield while trying to catch up with ranged. So much factors that make groups of ranged incredibly hard to fight even with an equal number of shielders. Sure this change might help a little, but it is probably too dev time intensive at this point.