Originally Posted by
Stormcloak
Higher activity means you will attack or parry more times a round, but use up more endurance. Higher bloodlust means you will try to do more damage with each swing, but again use up more endurance. Increasing both also reduces your accuracy. Generally you want to scale this based on those factors. Another important thing is to get your weapon skill up to at least 8 ASAP, and then to 10. This greatly improves your accuracy and let's you push activity and bloodlust higher. Generally something like 5/5 is a decent ballpark for the lower levels and you can increase it as you improve if it fits your strategy.
To run a defensive strategy at level 9 is tough, just because you don't have access to all the triggers and you might not even have access to the parry or tank or counterattack styles yet. One thing to keep in mind is that the higher lines on the list have a higher priority. So your second line will override your third line if the trigger is met. If you let us know what class your glad is and what skills you're looking to get then we can help you out with a plan for how to develop.