I want the shield to really feel like part of the arsenal. Definitely a moving kind of cover with it would be great, I'm very happy with the AOE slam knock back. It has a really powerful feel to it and it's satisfying to use. The frontal cone does seem like a redundant ability. If we had a decent cleave on a weapon I'd rather be doing that. It's a small animation with a small range and arc and a small amount of damage. Bigger, more satisfying and with an aoe stun might be a way to go. I want this guy and his massive shield and power weapon to be like a freakin Juggernaut. A movable siege engine. (I don't know the lore of the game. If there's juggernauts in it somewhere, I don't mean those. Just the regular sense of the word) 

What about some kind of rocket pack shield charge? Reflecting damage back at the attacker might be good too.

With regard to making the cover mechanic redundant for melee characters, from my experience it already is. You can hide for a while, but if you really want to fight most guys you have to move out of cover, close the gap and fight them toe to toe.

Shield is fine and very powerful with its aoe knockdown. The shield bash though I feel is a bit redundant as its just a frontal cone aoe that doe a bit of damage. It should also have the ability to stun enemies as well for a few seconds.  

It depends on your build. There is this one node which reduces your CDs(the ones that are longer than 3 seconds) by 1 second when hit. This is pretty useful for melee chars since they get hit a lot. It almost allows you to spam the AoE shield skill, but unfortunately the node didn't work correctly when I tested it(only worked for the 20-30 first hits or randomly).

Shield is relatively worthless right now. The ability CDs are way too long to take a shield rather than a plasma pistol.

While this sounds interesting, I think it would just be too op. It would make the cover system redundant for melee chars. I think the whole deflect mechanic alone is pretty strong and in a good place right now.