Originally posted by Hobo Misanthropus:

Bucklers are ideal for people who have trained their block skill up considerably

They can be very useful, but their usefulness at current game stages is actually reduced over time in comparison to round shields.

If your block skill is low, but you are are otherwise "skilled" as a player, you will benefit a great deal from use of bucklers.

But as your blocking skill increases to ever higher levels, you will eventually find that, if we use the carapace shields as an example:

1) Carapace buckler parry armor will eventually reach well beyond attack damage of any current enemy in the game
2) Carapace shield parry armor can protect you from any single attack and the skill-adjusted base block armor will likewise shield you from almost anything (it will go up to 150 or so at quality 2, enough for any normal enemy).

It's the same thing in iron tier, the last time a biome had both buckler and round shield available in same tier. Banded shield block armor is enough to parry strikes even from 2* draugr elite at maxed block skill. But in that phase of the game players likely won't have maxed skills at anything yet, so the effect doesn't come fully to fruition yet.

You could also see this as simply making lower tier bucklers more effective in higher end content, but I wonder where that will lead us. It also raises into question what the "ultimate equipment" in Valheim will look like for shields. Will all three different shield types be available in Deep North or some hypothetical extra tier beyond it?