For my latest siege defence I had melee gear /setup on both main and alt and this time my main managed even slightly more soul shards than my alt. 

However another  factor is that the Ubba gear that I had traditionally used  had standard gems and runes for health and defence, not melee gems and runes which could add a bit of extra melee strength. But in my case it doesn't. My melee gear  has only 2 melee gems in each and the Battle Cry rune for offence is replaced by Steel Vortex rune for health and defence in Ubba and Raine. I guess my next experiment could be to try replacing the runes and gems in my Ubba gear with melee runes and gems but I am not convinced it is worth the effort.

Yes this would be my choice if I expected to majorly join in for other than spy stronghold defenses/attacks ... but I intend to be only/mainly doing the spy stronghold defenses/attacks.  So I am thinking my ubber would be best for this and I do not plan to do spy attacks for towns.

Personaly i use wendla and hero scouts gear for defending scouts marches during siege, for all other marches i use hero ubba and raine shaman. Use total defense, total health and total offense gems, runes total health/health guarding fortress.... makes it easy to switch troop types without switching shaman or hero... i have siege cavs and killers as troop types (secret knowledge: fortress, defending , attacking)

If you only have 1 troop type , i woukd suggest you make hero and shaman for that troop type only. More kills than with ubba and raine . 👍

It would seem no one likes using Raine against Jotun scouts even though Raine has at least 600% total extra health/ defence/ offence, in defence, compared to Wendla (well mine has anyway).  ???

Raine gear will likely have gems/rune alligned to preferred troop type while Wendla will have gems/rune which improve scouts.  Which might explain a preference to use Wendla.

What the comparison would be if a set were created so as to switch Raine's gems/rune to scout orientation (or if Raine were given total health, offence, defence gems/rune rather than preferred troop) I don't know.

My Raine has melee runes and gems (i.e. not counted)  and still has 600% more health/ offence /defence in defence than Wendla with all her scout gear gems and runes combined.

(NB Raine's levels of legendary gear adds up to 19 and Wendla's legendary gear adds up to 20.)