Best stats for defense

I'm trying to build a good defensive war and have a few questions for the veteran managers out there:

1) Does anyone know if stacking strength gives a bonus to defense at all?
2) I know agility boosts defense, but doesn't high encumbrance eliminate that benefit?
3) Does LAAF recover some of that defensive boost from agility for highly encumbered wars?
4) Is it better to stack +defense gear or +agility gear for defense?
5) About how much defense does one point in agility give anyway?
6) Do any other stats effect defense?

That's a lot more questions than I started the thread with...but fire away!

Strength-base Wars are at the bottom of the food chain at the moment, except if you arm them with light axes or war hammers. Strength boosts only damage and somewhat reduces encumbrance. What's paradoxical is that Agility does far better job when it comes to dealing with the initiative penalties of the heavy armour.

Agility is the attribute for you if you need any kind of defensive or offensive gladiator in the meta game right now. It gives extra defense, initiative, attacks and also boosts the damage of a large number of weapons. Frankly, I even think it does more than it should, making the Agility-based builds overly used.

Nobody knows how much each point of Agility boosts defense. Except Nate. The more, the better, as you can imagine.

Light as a Feather is... weird. It does next to nothing on gladiators who are relatively low on Agility but gets increasingly better the more Agility you stack. It mainly boosts initiative though, I doubt that it does something to pump up defense.

Fact is Kreegan that wars that use blades are even lower on the food chain compared to 2H and A&M wars.

Sadly I can't answer you about the mechanics of LAAF or the agility > defense conversion, all I know is that if you want your war to swing with full hevay armour you better get him armour movement + LAAF or atleast armour movement :p

As for defensive war, what type of defensive war are we talking about? Shield + Mace/Sword or something else?
In the case of shields I would suggest carrying a sword with it, the sword makes up for the low attack rate that these types of wars have which means they don't get beaten up by the crowd as much + there is a small chance of causing bleeds on your opponent to bleed em whilst tanking. I would certainly go for agility, stamina, abit of size if your stats allow it and strength on 1 or 2 pieces with some + defense mixed in.

There are quite some pieces for wars that support a defensive build and give defense along the lines of +5 and so on on multiple pieces which in the end stacks up nicely. The main thing you will want is to aim to have atleast 140+ stamina with them, having this amount makes it posisble to move at a fairly high activity setting thus enabling you to parry attacks better whilst still seeing your opponents drop to the ground.

Thanks for the replies.

I'm trying to build a good tank for use on my Conquest teams. I don't mind if it's not the best in the arena.

Here's my glad: Seraph Zeta
76 72 75 80 100 81 78

Nice and solid all-around...and BIG. I started him off with A&M with shield, but wondered if switching to sword and shield would be better - if the agility I'd stack for swords would boost defense even while highly encumbered.

So a purely defensive build. I need him to take the attention of the mini-bosses so my other glads can take them down.

Any thoughts on good tanking strategy? How to avoid getting things thrown at you? What activity is best for parry?