I was surprised that my level 35 had more skill points than expected, I can now create perfect builds again.
Shields are also as strong as they ever should be. If they become problematic, they'll get nerfed.
Edit:
There were quite a few things I was thinking of for the shield changes. I was wondering why shielder doesn't seem to be as good as 2h/polearm (but it was close). In fact, a pure 1h no shield build is very strong despite lower damage from 1h weapons.
Despite being quite useful, shields are naturally balanced by their weight, speed not being as fast as a manual block, axes, crushthrough, nudging turtlers, etc. It took quite a bit of shield skill before a shield becomes very useful. Over the years, this was slightly altered with increasing low tier shield durability and decreasing shield difficulties.
I came to two conclusions:
-For the really durable/large shields, the encumbrance was too high to be worth lugging them around most of the time.
Many of them are still capable of getting pierced by a +3 arbalest. I felt that tightening the weight differences between shields so that there is a steady curve from 2 weight to 8 weight will offer enough of a variety without making a shield feel too useless because of its weight. They are already balanced by poor shield speed, which can be made up for with good shield skill.
The biggest concern was crushthrough, but I **think** that it is still affected by factors such as shield armor as well. I don't think making weight so high just for CT was too great because then you just become slower than the mauler anyways.
-Increase the effectiveness of shield skill.
We were getting to a point where the opposite may have happened - Str-based shield skill difficulties, making shield skill useless. By making shield skill agi/6 and difficulties 1-3, it will still take some effort to max shield skill based on your build. Even if you have a 12-15 agi build, you can still allocate those extra 2 stat points to more IF (which helps STR builds more). 1 to 3 is also the most straightforward path to better shields. Before, there were only like 8 1-difficulty shields. Now there are decent amounts of each difficulty shield.
If anything becomes too strong, it can be altered/nerfed. I hope not since the max shield skill hasn't really changed or it's worse, such as 3, 9, 15, 21, and 27 agi builds.