I need some fine tuning help with this build. I made it through the game on ultimate the last boss took me forever. I still get destroyed by high end boss battles, morgoneth, or heart of the forest. Ive had little luck getting any gear upgrades either. Gear isnt that great.
Thoughts and ideas, any constructive advice is appreciated!
Welcome to the forum!
To be honest, Blademaster isn’t a good choice for a shield build, especially for a physical damage one. You should consider to re-specing your build into Dual-Wield Melee Cold or Pierce focus, but physical damage also is not impossible and atleast you have target farmable weapons
check this for physical focus
Check this for pierce
Check this for cold
But also I guess you can make a Trauma/Blade arc build with Targo set, just a sketch without affixes or optimization https://www.grimtools.com/calc/q2MwW60Z
Some of those look intriguing, im not sure i have the gear to do a complete respec.
This is what i was going for, obviously its a bit dated now
https://www.grimtools.com/calc/d2jlKXmZ
That blademaster you linked to is just … why? No circle of slaughter, no zolhan, no blitz, …
Sorry but that is a bad idea. You gain nothing from Nightblade side, the sword Might of Beronath conversion has no use in the build except Light of Empyrion proc which is defensive skill mostly. I suggest you consider other options as Blademaster; you can make a shield build after that with Warlord, Oppressor, Witchblade etc.
ok so clearly what i got is trash. What i want to avoid is respeccing and then being in a worse position, though that seems almost impossible from what im reading. The consensus im seeing in all these builds in dual wielding. My concern is survivability thus the shield. I dont care if my damage is not super high end. Just looking to able to survive some of the boss fights in ultimate dungeons.
Thanks for the tips…
with those garbage resistances, low armor, low DA, and not so great damage - no shield in the game will save you 
I did a Blademaster variant of [1.1.9.0] Budget Physical Cadence S&B Warlord : (small changes made) https://www.grimtools.com/calc/xZy0BQwV WAY tankier (but still small dps)