Speaking as a scout, (lvl 35 ranger), you will probably never see a situation where you would want to use a one handed weapon and a shield. I know I never have!
Your best DPS will come from a pair of fast dual wield weapons. Each with a swing time of around 1.2 or 1.4
Like Dirges, I prefer to carry one slash and one pierce. That way, both your skills stay maxed but also, if you come across a mob who is not affected by one or the other you will still do damage.
If you can afford to get one or both weapons imbued, you will greatly increase the amount of damage you do since the damage proc from imbuing hits almost every fight and does a good amount of damage. Also, if you can afford to buy one or both weapons made from the rare metal in each tier, the damage takes another large jump.
Be aware that current belief is that only one of the two DW weapons you are carrying can proc during a fight so buying 2 imbued weapons will only help you when you are up against a named or boss mob who is unaffected by one type of damage. For these situations, you could also carry an additional weapon for each type of damage and switch one out so for that mob, you were wielding two both weapons of the effective type.
What I am currently doing, (in T4), is carrying a rare imbued slash in main and a nice quested piercer, (purchased off the broker), in off-hand. Between the rare metal, the imbue and the poison I get high DPS and lots of procs.
And finally, do use poison... always...
You can concurrently apply one poison of each type and any or all can proc during each and every swing. So, for example, you could have a DoT, and a de-buff both going at the same time.
My preference in poison is to use a damage poison with a high initial hit and a small DoT. The reason for this is that any multiple proc, (of that type of poison), will over-write the initial proc so I like to get my damage up front in case of a re-proc. (If the de-buff procs, it will not over-write the damage proc.)
Regarding Drodo in EL, he does have a fun series of quests that all yield armor, (including a cap), however, they are for light armor, (leather), and you should be wearing medium, (chain).
There is a guy named Spindlecog in the Baubleshire, (standing in the bank), who gives out a quest series where the reward is a nice cap in cloth, leather or chain... there may even be a plate model available! There are 3 or 4 steps to the quest and the final reward is the chainmail cap that is the "recommended" completion to the scout AQ series. (since no headgear is included in any of the AQ series)