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As the title suggest, i'm undecided when it comes to which setup to put on the exarch. The catapults were my initial choice simply for increasing the amount of shots out of bladestorm, but recently more players at my local shop have been using the shimmershield and sword combo to turn the DA's into a quasi-tarpit, and it doesn't seem like bladestorm really suffers that much from 4 less shots. I would appreciate some opinions or advice from those who have had experience with one or both of these layouts, and could offer some feedback.

Well you have more or less answered the question yourself. I believe that your assertion on 4 less shots not meaning too much are correct. It is also correct that the avengers can function as a quasi-tarpit if given the shimmershield and a sword. Now you have to ask yourself what you want their role to be? Do you want them to be shooty death or do you want them to be both shooty death and a quasi-tarpit? What would be more useful to you in your army? Are you likely to put them in positions where they will end up in hand to hand or are they more likely to be in positions were hand to hand combat is rare?

For the most part, I tend to see people putting their avengers into dangerous situations where the shimmershield is the more useful of the two options. All in all, you don't sacrifice much in the way of fire power to get it and its not that expensive point wise. I think the only real problem with the shimmershield is the psycological one of people wanting to make sure they use it. This causes people to try to get their avengers into hand to hand even if they don't need to be there. So long as you understand that your avengers are significantly more powerful when shooting and you don't get them involved in unnecessary hand to hand combat, I think the shimmershield is a good investment.

My fiends and I have been playing recently using the pdf thats floating around instead of the 4th ed rule book. As a consequence I've been playing around with a ground pounding eldar army here's what I've noticed.
Avengers with shimmer shield and fortune can take on anything from death company to genestealers. If you have an avatar near by then they have the added benefit of being fearless.

In my regular games I tend to use avengers like fish o fury tau. I'll get a round or two of shooting blade storm and charge and massacre, or tarpit. Avengers can hold of some of the nastier assault units. You just have to be a little careful with them.

In short, sword shield and defend just adds too much flexibility to give up.

I run a mostly infantry Eldar army, and I have used both configurations.

IMO the twin catapults are much better. The armor save is so low, that you end up not needing a 5+ inv save because the regular wounds are what kills you.

And you are missing 4 shots a round at BS 5, and 5 shots if you bladestorm. You will kill a lot more that way than a strength 3 power weapon that only gets 2 attacks.

Heck, I have had that squad in assault a lot, and it will always lose to just about any unit, and then break and run.

The thing to remember is they do well against small units of assault troops like stealers or terminators. Troops that drown them in attacks like beserkers and scorpions will kill avengers quickly. But defend lets you lower the number of attacks while shimmer shield lets you save against PW, PF, and rending. Sometimes they can take an unit out in assault but normally I use them to lock units in place unit thing like my shining spears can come to the rescue.

If you assault or get assaulted then the exrta shots are wasted, and if you blade storm then you sit around being useless for a turn. Give hem something to do while they reload.

It also depends upon their support.

If there's a Farseer around to Fortune them , the SS/PW combo does make them a great tarpit. Without it, not so much.

If your army features a good countercharge unit to follow up on the tarpit action, they're a good investment. if all you have is a Wraithlord standing nearby looking pretty, it's probably a good idea to invest in more shooty bits instead.

Me, I always go for the PW/SS. It's good to have options, and they're killer at defending objectives, and at absorbing fast CC units that get by your shooting before anything more important gets killed or tied up.