We always say things like "defensive armors are useless because attack buffs are better than defense". But has anyone actually tried to max out defense, and see how much damage you take? I'm talking going to FSC with Dread Skelly armor with Shadow Defense MAX! and Normal Defense MAX! UVs on both pieces, and two Dread Skelly Charms. How much damage is actually blocked?
I say this because I would imagine defense can stack much higher than attack buffs, if each individual armor, helm, and trinket adds its own defense and the UVs stack separately.
There's only so much defense you can have before you start seeing diminishing returns, at least in my experience. Take the ancient plate set for example. It has one of the highest possible normal defenses already on it, and when hit by a sword attack from a Trojan Knightmare in T3 with a fully heated Ancient set, you'll only take three pips of damage. If you were to say, throw normal and shadow max UV's on each piece, those three pips would likely go to two and a half, or perhaps only two. Either way, it's impossible to almost completely negate damage to a manageable degree, especially with reduced movement and attack speed, and nobody in their right mind would go around getting hit in the face with large swords (there's a sexual innuendo in there, I'm sure), making any attempts to become a true tank impractical, or at least very, very, expensive. Dread Skelly may be more defensive with said UV's on it, but who knows for sure? The amount of money it would take would be far greater than affordable, at least with most budgets. I'll stick with my Chaos and fragility, thank you very much.