armour defense consideration

i am wondering how many of you pay consideration to the defense rating on armour....
up until now, i have been only concerned with poise, looks and having a piece of thorn armour....
today in the arena i got beaten by a well known player, his build was a VIT gouge with a chaos halberg....
i decided to roleplay and make a new legit character, play through the game for some fun and make i VIT gouge with a chaos great scythe....and I want to make use of armour with high defense to go with my large amount of health.... what are good pieces for defense to weight ratios....?
what do people regard as some of the better pieces of armour?
cheers

Haven't looked at this in ages but from what I remember the Elite Knight set upgraded is pretty good.

And the poise is good too depending on where you are... (unless that's been changed by the 1.06 patch?)

On my first playthrough I was making a tank, so I really cared about defence. Now my choice of armour goes by looks > weight > poise.

DMC wrote:Haven't looked at this in ages but from what I remember the Elite Knight set upgraded is pretty good.

And the poise is good too depending on where you are... (unless that's been changed by the 1.06 patch?)

EK set is a great set defensively, and it did get patched up to 46 poise so its even better now.