Have you looked into Radiant Silvermail with Vog Cub Cap?

you dont need any piercing protection at all really. Also, for the most part every attack you take will be either just normal or a mix of normal and either shadow or elemental. Normal defense is my far the most important stat to max, so make sure you arent sacrificing it for weaker defense like piercing.

Additionally, shields only provide their defense when you are blocking with them, so you definately want normal defense on your shield to make its health last longer. I recommend the Owlite line.

As far as status resists, I wouldnt put too much effort into getting a lot of it, especially if you have to sacrifice useful defense. They are nice, dont get me wrong, especially fire for doing citadel, however they only lower the time they last and the intensity of the effect a bit. Resists like curse for example arent that useful unless you really like using the charge attack on faust, or you run a ton of graveyards. Even then, you will still get hit with the debuff and it will still be annoying, just a little less so.

One more thing, the bars arent an exact science, they cant necessarily be directly compared across items. For example the fang of vog looks like its as fast as the brandish line fire sword however its actually much slower. There are also weapons that look like they do just slightly less then another when the damage is actually considerable. As far as armor goes, i dont have any specific examples however I would take all bar values with a grain of salt and not as an absolute power level of the item to compare or add to others.