1. Bonuses based on how much health one has.
Like, if you're down to a critical HP amount, or you have full HP, a special bonus will be activated.
2. Different guarding types.
Rather than have all shields give you 360 defense and nullify damage until it breaks, why not have an unbreakable shield, but the defending range is small and/or it doesn't nullify all damage, and only reduces damage by like... 85%
3. Have some sort of statistic that tells us how buffed up our attacking speed or charge speed reduction is, and tell us exactly if we've reached the bonus cap or if we're close.
I wholeheartedly agree with suggestion 1.
2: Are you saying different shield types? Like, a type that blocks only attacks from the front for x hits, one that blocks 360 degrees around for less than x hits, a third type that blocks status/damages the enemy or something...? Sounds cool.
3: Agreed; it's hard to see the difference between "Low" and "Ultra" for some of the equipment boosts. I liked the numbers that told us what our Def/Elm/Per etc were! I didn't know what they meant in terms of actually reducing damage, but I liked the numbers...