The vanilla shield has durability.
You could make a blood shield that consumes LP(duh!) to protect you.
Also,maybe,give it a thorns effect

If way wants to do this I have an idea for it that would work with the living armor elytra texture.. :)

Er...was an idea for Blood Arsenal, but like anything, will be happy to implement into vanilla BM if Way wants

Close because of a similar issue that discusses implementation.