Yeah, the lack of blocking kinda sucks. Sword and board characters are kinda not worth playing imo. I mean, it might be viable if the shield provided a substantial bonus to physical/magic armor, but it just doesn't right now. I haven't read the whole thread yet, but I just wanted to state my opinion.
This is also true
Side note: it's for all these reasons that health really doesn't matter much -_- so why bother with HP
For the enemies at least; the AI isn't smart enough to CC a player to death on purpose yet
