Is defence still irrelevant in pvp?

[Cabalabob]

It used to be irrelevant because morale was your defence, but they have changed morale to be extra ilvl now or something, so when they changed morale did they make defence relevant? Or is it still useless?

If it's still useless can we see changes to protect and foresight to be damage reduction instead in pvp?

[Kai_Lee]

Pretty sure defense still has a role, its far more difficult to kill a tank with much higher hp and defense then dps.

[Llus]

It used to be irrelevant because morale was your defence, but they have changed morale to be extra ilvl now or something, so when they changed morale did they make defence relevant? Or is it still useless?

If it's still useless can we see changes to protect and foresight to be damage reduction instead in pvp?

Skills and spells that increase defense are useless in PvP. Protect and foresight do nothing and everyone has the same baseline defense in PvP but other skills are useful - keen flurry, manawall, featherfoot, stoneskin etc. morale has no real effect in pvp due to the ilevel sync.

[Geologo]

Pretty sure defense still has a role, its far more difficult to kill a tank with much higher hp and defense then dps.

It's just because they have higher HP, so if a skill on a DPS will hit for 20% of their HP, on a tank it will hit for about 13%, so your attacks seem weaker, but they suffer the same damage.
Also they have some Damage reduction ability (they still works in pvp), so that should be your problem.

Edit: Sorry I was wrong, I forgot about Class/Job damage reduction as SuperZay linked below.

[KusoWat]

That's because tanks have 20% resistance to physical attacks while the other dps/healers only have 10-15% resistance to physical attacks. While having almost 50% more hp than dps/healers. On top of defense cds like mentioned above.

[Guesswhat]

Protect is NOT useless. This must have been the thing I've said most on these forums... Use protect! Yes, by itself it's useless, but it works well as an anti-debuff. It's a shield for you other buffs against abilities that strip off buffs.

More on topic: Yes, the defense stat is not something you should bother with in PvP. Everyone has the same defense, but, if I'm not mistaken, tanks have a slight damage reduction.

[SuperZay]

Deep burried in old patch notes.

[Kai_Lee]

Why did bards got shaft, average all around.

[KusoWat]

Protect is NOT useless. This must have been the thing I've said most on these forums... Use protect! Yes, by itself it's useless, but it works well as an anti-debuff. It's a shield for you other buffs against abilities that strip off buffs.

More on topic: Yes, the defense stat is not something you should bother with in PvP. Everyone has the same defense, but, if I'm not mistaken, tanks have a slight damage reduction.

Most people say Protect is useless because they keep getting healers who respawn and think they need to protect so instead of healing everyone up they prioritize getting Protect on everyone which usually ends in people dying. Encouraging them not to use it so they don't use it mid fight.

[Ultimatecalibur]

Why did bards got shaft, average all around.

Because high mobility with ranged attacks is a defense all its own.