NOTE: The theme of this thread has changed drastically since the first post. I would suggest reading through the entire thread so far so that you know what's going on. TL;DR version: starts off with an MMO tank mindset, changes mind with help of forumgoers, becomes better player, and is still learning how to be a better player so you should totally help him.
EXTRA EDIT: I've received a lot of in-game praise from people about this post, and how my decisions in this thread have influenced their decisions on equipment. To me, this is wonderful--I have helped people like me get better at the game. However, everyone plays differently; as such, I would like to make clear that my decisions here don't exactly reflect the best decisions available for all players. I ended up becoming a mutation of swordsman, bomber, and gunner, utilizing all three weapon styles in unison to suit a playstyle completely custom to myself, and relatively defensive in style. At this point, I would not consider myself "tanky" in a traditional sense but I do notice that I die less frequently against enemies I initially dreaded. My point is, the decisions to make on your armor are yours to make and yours alone, and they are no one else's. That said, I'm glad to be a starting point for many of you. Thanks for reading this thread through, and thanks to the posters who helped!
The running theme of this game, from what I've seen so far, seems to be that the more damage you have, the better off you are; defensive characters are sort of left in the dust. My friends are building for attack speed and damage and maybe a little bit of armor on the side, but mostly everything seems to be for damage. See, I'm not a big fan of that--I like being that guy that refuses to go down for any reason ever. If the Core ends up collapsing on itself and blowing the entirety of Cradle apart, I want to be able to log in after the fact and watch as my character drifts through space with his health bar still mostly intact. In fact, if his health bar is 50 blocks long, that's even better. I don't need extra damage, or to move faster, or wear a silly flaming dog hat; I have Faust, a blaster, and a graviton bomb, so armor tough enough to survive atmospheric re-entry is all I need.
There are some armors that give something like what I want--the plate series is nice, for sure--but it leaves me vulnerable to elemental and shadow damage, just wearing it. The crazy hodgepodge I have now (Wyvern Scale Helm, Mighty Cobalt Armor, Sinister Skelly Shield) is decent, but I'm still seeing more than one health block pop off at once. Slow is fine, status weaknesses are okay (it's what those nice blue-green pills are for), and the only mission is to make a character as hard to put out of commission as possible.
The title says it all, folks. What are your builds and practices for making a character into a walking wall of unstoppable metal?
That doesn't really work in this game, especially in tier 3. The key is to AVOID hits, since once you get to tier 3, losing six or so bars of health from a hit isn't at all unexpected. This isn't the sort of game where you're expected to trade blows with the enemy.