Diablo – Do you gain a set bonus when using two of the same item from a set

Well, I think the main issue is that a shield on your off-hand restricts the weapon you use on your main hand to a hand crossbow, as opposed a quiver on your off-hand which lets you use two handed bows as your main weapon.

But other than that, i can think of no reason why using a shield would be inherently bad, other than the fact that you need a good hand-crossbow to go with it. In fact, a shield with a good dexterity stat can increase your DPS as much as a quiver, while also increasing your defense and survivability much more than a quiver could.

I think it comes down to what specific items you have and what balance of DPS and survivability you want. Turn on advanced tooltips, and play around with equipping different weapon combos, and see how your damage/armor rating changes. Sometimes using a shield will be better, and sometimes it won't.

We don't currently know Analysis could be done, but due to the nature of Diablo 3 and not having any sort of a combat log, it would be quite tricky.

My best guess is they use the same/similar mechanics to WoWs rage The way this works in WoW is The amount varies based on the character's health. Attacks that are blocked, parried, or absorbed generate rage.

WoW still does not have exact mechanics available for rage This leads me to believe that if Blizzard wants to keep these details secret they can and will. Most likely they will also tweak these values as they see fit. This is another advantage to having everything on the server side, Blizzard can keep the game in balance as they see fit.