Do you have to be empty handed for ironhands to fire, or can you hold a shield and still parry using ironhands?

You can improve on it with a shield, but it didn't seem as effective for me with shield. Also, your spec skills are useless unless you have two empty hands, so generally it's a poor plan. As a fire giant, using my favorite defenses perfecting area, I was able to perfect (or real close, don't recall exactly) ironhands pretty easily. At first I was using a shield, but it hurt more than it helped (in my opinion) so I went no shield and it wasn't bad.

Wow I had a dwarf and it took me FOREVER to master ironhands. I did it eventually, but it was closer to level 40. In terms of choosing people to practice it on, what guidelines do you use for selection. In other words, do some more difficult mobs make it easier, or do really easy mobs make it impossible.

My Favorite Defense Perfecting Area(tm) is perfectly suited for perfecting defenses early, but there is a certain risk of death, so... well it's a trade off. As a general rule, using mobs with really easy to parry stuff (read daggers/hands if the applicable weapon is perfected by you) is a bonus. Also, the longer you can fight, the better, but generally you just want to pack as many opportunities into as little time as possible. More difficult mobs make it easier, and really easy mobs make it more difficult, but generally you need a kind of in between with ironhands. Basically, if they're really easy you'll parry a ton, but learning is slower unless you've really upped the numbers, but if you really up the numbers and have to flee in 1 round, will thats not effective either. The ideal would be a bunch of razor/lucky mobs that generally don't hit you, or don't hit you hard, or don't hurt you more than you heal. For ironhands that's a very difficult balance to strike as you *probably* won't be a high dex (read high AC) race, so you can't rely on things missing you. Also, the buffer the mobs, the harder they are to parry. I can't tell you really specific criteria (like level 17 mobs that don't hit about injure) but what you are looking for in general is non-dirting, non-tripping, non-bashing, easily parryable mobs that hit for low enough that you can hang a few rounds with a bunch of them, or alternatively exist in large enough numbers (and give low enough xp per kill) that you can mow through groups of 2-3 at a time without a great need to rest. I will mention that as a high dex (AC) race, it is more or less trivial to find someone that essentially won't hit you at low levels (15-20) but it is considerably more difficult with slow dumb races. Giant resist helps, so it'd prolly be a bit more difficult for a dwarf, but I imagine I could do it at My Favorite Defense Perfecting Area(tm) given a few hours work. That said, I'll not be divulging it's location as, well a defense perfecting area is only useful if it's unknown, also I imagine it's close to being nerfed just by the volume of time my characters spend there on defenses. (I've been beat down by imms for my activities there)

Short of it: Lots of parry opportunities per time and low damage output of the npcs is what I look for.