Elysian is generally considered the best defencive shield where you don't want to burn through prayer potions (compared to devine). Dragonfire beats elysian by 7 stab, 10 stab, 8 magic, 15 range defence, and 7 strength. Elysian beats dragonfire by 1 crush, 3 prayer, 10 magic attack, and 5 range attack. Those small defence losses aren't even worth the range/mage penalties (assuming you're not meleeing) and that's without the 70% chance of a 25% damage reduction. Add that reduction, and elysian is far better then dragonfire especially in high damage situations. Your preposed draconic shield beats elysian by 12 stab, 15 slash, 5 crush, 13 magic, and 18 range, not parcticularily good considering elysian's effect, except it has no attack penalties, 7 strength, and 3 prayer. Now, even for all combat styles, draconic is better then elysian. A draconic visage and a blessed spirit shield costs 19.9m, and elysian spirit shield costs 348.5m. You don't think a shield which costs over 17x as much as the better compition would fall in price...? I thought it was pretty obvious: reduce it's prayer boost. A logical prayer setup for melee has 35-40 prayer; even if your previous shield was falidor (3) you'd be gaining 26 prayer bonus. That's about a 70% increase in prayer bonus (along with significant defence boosts) for replacing a single item. 15 prayer sounds much more reasonable. I misunderstood here, I thought you meant prayer would be gained based upon what you hit; however 50%/50% still seems too high. You could for example use zamorak brews to lower your defence (and conveniently, boost your offence) and wear low defence prayer boosting gear such as monk's robes with a mitre stole ect so you get "hit" often, while praying protection and maybe even offencive prayer. Making training easier with lower def is illogical. If it didn't boost your prayer based on "phatom hits" while you are praying protection it would work much better. Jagex's time and resources are limited though. Obviously, I'm not saying that only updates required to keep the game running should be made, I'm saying that updates should be focused on areas that need updating. As I stated, there are plenty of excellent shield avaliable. Would it make sence for Jagex to spend time making 10 more colours of wizard's hats? No, because we already have many colours to choose from.