My post actually covers a lot of the parts that you think is wrong with the shield. I don’t think that a weapon being more dependent on stats from curios (such as stamina stats) is a bad thing by itself as long as the payout is worth it, but the real issue there is with the useless crafting system, not the weapon/build.
Hopefully if recommendations like mine are used, then that will happen. One of the biggest issues with the shield in my opinion outside of the damage, speed and special move (yikes, why is this a list?), is definitely the way you get staggered when your toughness breaks and how you don’t block ranged hits while pushing. If you push a melee enemy and get shot during that time you will probably get staggered and take a lot of damage, despite have the “counter” weapon for ranged troops.
Speaking of ranged enemies I actually have another post taking about how toughness mechanics should be changed to smoothen out the gameplay. 1 change involves making specifically the basic ranged enemies not 1 shot toughness, which would also help with the stagger problem in general.