Rearguard Dreams + Stuff

I am currently trying to make a tanky archer kind of duelist build, and I found out today that gems like Vengeance, Riposte and Reckoning don't work with bows. I have a Rearguard and I plan on using The Anvil for more tankiness, and a Chin Sol later on with heralds and ice arrow + crit for burst damage.

I'm still probably going to try this build still in preparation for the Point Blank buff and for some of the other changes, even though I can't use counter attack gems. However I want to talk about how cool it would be if Rearguard did what it didn't, just for fun.

If Rearguard was a quiver AND a shield
If it was, I would actually fan-girl over this item. Like your character would pull arrows out of his bow-arm where the quiver would be or something. You could block properly, shield bash and the shield nodes for duelist would work amazingly with the Lioneye's Fall gem for duelist-archers. I think that would be cool. Also you could quickly switch between builds - like you could be Chin Sol build one second and the next you're a Molten Strike build or a Spectral Throw build. (Idk why you would want to do that except maybe you're surrounded by dudes or something.)

If some (not necessarily all) of the counter-attack gems worked with bows
Archers are capable of stabbing people with an arrow or smacking them with a bow (not in this game, I mean generally I think) so If counter-attack gems worked with bows, This could be the reasoning on why that could work. Idk I'm just saying what I think would be cool in this game.

Crossbows
This is kinda off-topic, I thought about Arbalest-class kind of builds or at least high-burst, slow defensive archers and well I then thought about crossbows XD. I think crossbows would be OKAY, not super logical for a choice of weapon but I don't think they should be excluded from sheer existence. I'm just thinking of how a support-archer class could be viable in PoE, I LOVE theorycrafting and I sometimes make builds just for fun and not really for effectivenes - which is what is driving me to make my first thread here ^_^.

Comment to tell me your thoughts on the "Defensive Archer" concept. Remember it's just for fun.

P.S-(Also I'm sorry if I broke any PoE forum rules or made this in the wrong place. I read them so I don't think I did but I could be wrong...)

Edit: I forgot to mention that Lioneye's fall not working with the duel-wield nodes but working with shield nodes (kinda) was a thing. I thought that was interesting too.

Well, you get 24/15 from Reargaurd, 10/0 from lioneye's fall in templar. 30/15 from runies, 8/0 from anvil. This gives 72/30. Corrupt 4% block on the amulet and you get 76/30. Rainbow-strides get you to 76/49. I would imagine the duelist accentuation class would actually make it easy to get 78/75 indefinably.

Flask effect can also push block higher.

I find it a fun mechanic to play with, stack tons of armor on stuff like chest and belt and you can really tanky. Speaking of that, lioneye's vision and glare work really well for this.

My personal favorite however in Quillrain Rearguard incinerate. Mmmmm..... 130% increased projectile speed. Always wanted to make a Iron Will marauder that did that and also stacked a bunch of block.

I also toyed with the idea of witch ascension with reargaurd (for the 30% more block and spell block from offerings).

Just saying :D