- You should have saw that, your combos use 3 DIFFERENT sides of attacks (it will be something like left, front, right,- and NEVER will be left left right).

- You should have saw that, you can see what side your opponent hits you.

-You should have saw that you can change keybinding from CTRL+1 etc to something way easier like wxc or numpad or whatever.

=> It works like this:
When an opponent is hitting you, if he's hitting you left, then you put your shield at front or right
then if he continues by hitting right, then you have to put your shield at front.

It is simple mechanism that you dont' always look at, and this will save you a lot of hp since their combos will suck if you block most of em. Now you will just have to train it enough to be able to place your shield, and do combos in same time! But I can promise you that if you start playing like this, you will take the skill in your hands and become impossible to get down from 1v1.

=> Note that you shouldn't use that if there are more than 1 guy(melee) hitting you, get all 3 sides shielded!
=> Also note that if you really are unsure about where will drop the next attack because you don't know what was the precedent attack, you can divide the shield into 2 locations (for example : 1 left, 2 front).