Riot shield

It could be used in place of of your primary weapon slot, when in place it doubles your defence stat. The shield is not permanent though and any damage it takes is permanent until it reaches a state in where it is unusable (starts off at 100% and damage reduces this) could be helpful to keep players on a wall longer whilst other team members refill e/meds. Obviously it would need to have a hefty price tag so not everyone would be able to equip one when a wall is thrown up... Just a random Sunday morning thought.

Hmm, with some tweaking it might actually be useful.

I don't think a mere doubled defense stat would be enough though, and durability would be impossible to balance well.

Edit: If durability is going to be a thing, it should absorb all damage, and be based on life points if the riot shield is hit, the shield should cover everything but the lower legs and part of one arm as an additional armour piece.

The damage stat should adapt to who is hitting it, by emulating the damage a player would take if they had identical defense to the attacker's strength, to make it useful at both high and low level combat.

that's a cracking idea. with a bit of playing around it should work well ,especially as u said for defending a wall

Could you still wield dual melee or secondary weapons? Seems odd if you are using three hands at once.

As it is there is already Serotinin in the game which increases Defence by 300% for 2 minutes and the No Shame No Gain Book which increases Defence by 100% for 31 days. Vicodin gives you +25% to all stats and Ketamine gives +50% to Defence. So there are already a handful of options for increasing the base stat. I think an equipped item would have to have some other angle than just a straight stat boost. Rather than boosting defence it seems like the shield could work like temporary Life. Maybe taking damage would deal a % of the damage to the shield until it breaks acting like an armour on the user but not full protection.

I also think you could run into a lot of issues when it comes to the market and selling used shields. Would it show the remaining durability and end up with a market flooded with shields on 9% or 5% or would you refresh the durability when its sold creating a perpetual booster? There would have to be a whole new mechanic that makes the shield bound to a user or "used" like books are so that you cant just use them and sell them or something just to prevent the market getting silly pretty much immediately. That is a lot to implement for a single item so to make it worthwhile you would want to add a bunch of items or some new mechanic that plays into it.

I also think if you are holding a riot shield your punch should be upgraded to a shield bash that does something more than a punch but less than a good primary weapon. I would want there to be a reason to equip a shield but at the same time would not want it to become a must have due to it being very powerful and everyone having one. I can also imagine the havoc they could potentially cause to chains if everyone just gets super tanky overnight.

I think its something that could work but you would need to figure out something that they add to the game while at the same time making sure they don't break the game. Honestly though I think organisation is your best tool specifically for faction walls. If that is the only thing it would really be for then I think there are already plenty of options for boosting your defences its just that they cost money and boosting your defences is not really worth it when you have good organisation to compensate and other things to use your resources on, like cans and xanax. Anything else you add will just be the same, if its really good it will cost a lot and if its not much good you wont bother with it anyway. If you want to add an equipped item it will have to do something that makes it worth equipping for a normal fight.