The Art of Thuggery

[Agema]

It depends what you use your thug for. As part of an army, they can be quite lightly equipped as the chaff around them acts to soak a lot of the punishment. If they've higher HP than any other units in the army they may want resistances against the mass of spells that will preferentially target them. If the thug is being used to clear PD on their own they could do with a bit more, as they may need to survive assassinations and have that extra lastability or hit avoidance.

As to the eye shield or vine shield, Vine Shields are surprisingly effective when two thugs meet. Most thugs/SCs will smash a lot of HP off each other as weapons tend to have AP and beat armour. A unit that's only going to survive a few blows won't have much time for MR resist eyeloss to occur. The entangle can delay attacks as the opponent needs to free themselves. The Vine Shield is also a much better tool versus PD because it disables the chaff so they can be killed at will - taking eyes out of chaff is fairly useless as they can barely stand up to you anyway. The eye shield must be nicer when two thugs/SCs pound away at each other for a long time. Your average thug/SC probably has high MR and can resist it a lot of the time, but eventually given time, all rolls get failed.