It's for this reason that my plan is to go through every melee and determine their worth based on how they were obtained, how much they were purchased for, and their special qualities(degree of knockback, etc.).

By 'worth', I'm talking about their damage, freeze, and timeout between attacks.

Yeah- I'm also going to look into this.
The fact that it's got the shield will definitely carry weight on its stats, that's no reason for its offensive properties to be worse than a regular shotgun.

Oh, and I don't know if I've brought this up yet, but I plan on also nerfing Olympic Rings. I had the misfortune to go against one, and for what it cost when the shop was out, it certainly shouldn't be as powerful as it currently is. I don't believe any item should be that powerful.
To clear up any confusion, 'powerful' is in reference to the weapon as a whole, I don't plan on changing the damage. Probably just adding a reasonable freeze, and skewing its spread a tad bit.