Personally I am not to fond of +1ing the relic/shield. +1 relic is very minor increase to stats/survivability, but is good for threat-gen. For me, I haven't had any threat issues yet with my group and am now clearing turn 4. If I started having threat issues, I'd consider curtana +1. I decided for myself and my group it was better to have better survivability than threat gen as we weren't having threat issues.

Just my thoughts on the matter.