PLD Gear?

[Molly_Millions]

Negative, defense only impacts physical damage, VIT however affects all non-DoT damage taken. It's actually a toss up either way tbh, VIT doesn't quite benefit mitigation as well as straight Defense, but it offers magical resistance in return and boosts your Enhancement Magic Potency (which actually scales pretty good in this game) making Stoneskin/Protect and other magic buffs stronger in turn.

Do you have test results or know where I can find some? Because I haven't seen any tests for DEF. I've seen them for VIT, but not for DEF. Without test results, this is an assumption.

[SwordCoheir]

Do you have test results or know where I can find some? Because I haven't seen any tests for DEF. I've seen them for VIT, but not for DEF. Without test results, this is an assumption.

Well as Stufoo pointed out there is a trait given to CONJ/WHM that adds/increases magical defense gained from Protect.

http://ffxiv.gamerescape.com/wiki/Enhanced_Protect

And back when the classes were initially revamped in 1.19 (1.20 maybe?), they did state that when they removed Shell they were adding a trait to Conj that gives Protect Magical Defense properties, so it's generally believed that they are classified as separate stats.

Considering there is no Magic Defense stat, I can easily see why you could assume that. But if you cast/receive Protect from a CONJ/WHM if you look at your elemental resistances they themselves increase. So it leads me to believe that your resistances is your only form of Magic Defense outside of VIT.

If you wan't an example of why Defense isn't generally believed to affect Magic Defense though, I can tell you on more than a few occasions when doing Garuda anyone who get's hit with Mistral Shriek/Song generally get's hit for around the same amount of damage as I do on either PLD or WAR.