Generally, medium/light armor seems best for shielders for me, otherwise people just s-key you all day, so your equipment looks fine.
All melee weapons have the same kind of hitbox (a straight line). The only difference the models make is that they confuse some people when they try to block, especially when it comes to curved swords or really thin models (picks, spathlovikon)
General advice for 1H/shielders (A lot of this will probably be considered incredibly huge dick moves/BM):
Really short weapons tend to glance less in hugging distance (I suspect this is mostly just low length allowing you to go further in the animation without hitting something, + high speed to make up for it)
If you're going to have 6 PS and use a cut weapon, you should bring a backup pierce weapon vs loomed medium/heavy plate armor. The pricier axes are perfect for this, since they swap to a slightly less powerful/slightly slower pick in secondary mode. A loomed rondel dagger also works well, but expect your opponents to complain about dagger/shield use, especially if you "180 degree stab".
If you're going to main a pierce/blunt weapon, loom a cheap axe for smashing shields.
As you go up in foot speed, maneuvering through your opponents with nudges becomes more viable, try to make them teamwound each other as much as possible. If nothing else, nudging your closest opponent generally leads to a free hit on another opponent, since many don't actively block if they're not the "main target".
Even if fighting a solitary opponent, nudging, moving past, then overheading from behind or stabbing with a dagger (longer stuff usually just glances) from behind is difficult to block for someone with average skills, since they'll have to block up/down, then turn to face your attack.
Block up vs throwers if they jump when you close in on them in melee, or free headshot.
If you're having a lot of trouble landing a hit on really good AGI lightly armored/naked melee fighters, just keep neutral shield nudging the hell out of them, it'll deal enough to kill them or make them run away out of sheer annoyance, and they generally don't have good shield smashing weapons.
If you outnumber some pole/2h hero, neutral nudge spamming them will let teammates kill them more quickly than you attacking, unless you're good at coordinating simultaneous different attack directions.
