That's cool! I thought I read somewhere that defense builds weren't very viable in that game because no matter what an attack has a chance of doing all the damage because armor blocks between zero and something. Is this information outdated, or does the shield solve this problem?
When not upgraded, armor blocks between 0 and X, but blocking increases with upgrades as +1/+tier. In addition, evasion means a hit can be avoided entirely.
I generally opt for evasion since it scales with upgrades I believe. At higher levels on plate armour it's great. Defense augmentation is dangerous if you don't have high defense to mitigate the DMG or a ring of elements to help you to reduce DMG from spells you're no longer good at avoiding