Quote Originally Posted by DE
I wonder if Kirito's sword will be half damage against shields since it's an energy weapon
It would. The better question is what half-damage actually is, along with any other max mitigations. In Skyrim armour could at best reduce 80% damage. That meant my sneak attacks were guaranteed to do at least 2000 damage to your HP, which nothing ever had.

Quote Originally Posted by DE
So his character's sword skills are probably about twice what any other player in existence's are.
They could be, if "sword skills" were a common thing between everything. Currently I'm more inclined to think that Kirito's base stats encourage physical close combat while he swings a sword because that's what he knows how to do, as opposed to because he's got 5000pts invested into the 'melee weapons' stat or something.