I am an int heavy hybrid sword/shield user. I also found that leveling my ice up to get the second book of mana shield at mastery lvl 30, helps fighting mobs alot higher then me. Costing about about 7k skill points including passive, I think its worth it. I did not max the ice tree, it is gonna stay at its current mastery.
As for the post directly above me I agree with you, paired with castle shield, and mana sheild, ints now have the skills to survive. Fair warning you only get castle shield for 15 seconds so be carefull still.
P.s I was in a four person auto-share yesterday. A 57 hybrid bow (glavie), a 64 blader, 65 glavier, and unless a peg crited I could tank like the strs with the combo of mana and castle shield. I also noticed that the str's had +3 64 weapons but me at 53 with a sos+5 sword/shield set I was out damaging them by 2k, and in zerk I do around 10k dmg to a PEG whom are lvl 64!!! I was in the secret peg room of course.
