The shield-bearers are pretty much extinct nowadays. The main reason for this, as I see it, is that the entire Shadow & Myst school practically ignores the shields either with bleeding, or with endurance draining while certain builds in the Arms & Armour school - mostly Rages, some Theatrics and even certain Wars - have a generally good performance against heavily defensive gladiators for years which is all the more visible at the moment. While I've never really been a huge fan of the sit-on-your-ass-and-delflect-attacks-until-the-opponent-drops-from-boredom type of strategy which was relatively widespread at one point (and is now succeeded by sit-on-your-ass-full-stop strategy used by the Trixters), the obsolution of an entire class of weapons makes the game less varied and... colourful. This needs to be addressed. What'd you say?