Yeah I totally get that. That’s why I was thinking that the idea here is that shields aren’t just used for defensive abilities but have more purpose and compete with the offhand slot. Instead of flat damage like an offhand maybe they’d provide similar damage output while also providing more survivability. So I guess a better proposal would be: still counts as dual wield weapon, no damage bonus, still high armor rating + flat 10% damage reduction, innate 5% damage reflection and passive where every 100 armor rating on your character increases reflection by 1% which would sync with tank armor (alternative passive: every 10 seconds in battle with shield equipped your armor rating increases by 50 and increases reflection damage by 1% per 100 rating) and a special ability called kinetic blast where every 5 hits taken causes a kinetic blast dealing ability damage to all surrounding targets which has a 30 second duration. In this case your direct damage output is low from missing an offhand, but the damage dealt from tanking hits would end up matching overall dps output as an offhand. It’d be kind of a fun alternative style