I believe shields are a massively underutilized equipment item in minecraft mods. They always get forgotten. To that end I think it would be cool if we had sentient and bound shields.

Given as the sentient sword stacks with will I think it would be cool if the shield could use will as it's durability and maybe get some other abilities/boosts.

Close. See reference.

no thanks

"AEon: we don't want shields in this mod"

the offhand primarily used for shields, is utilized instead for sigils, it wouldn't make much sense to add something in conflict with that

Hmm, I've never used a sigil in the off-hand, though it's an interesting idea. But the more important point is that shields are already one of the most powerful elements in vanilla. (That's me speaking as someone who was playing Minecraft before they were introduced! Skeletons especially were far more deadly....) Making them even more powerful is hardly necessary.