Ok so I had over 8k defense shirne included and some of these monsters just gave me a few shots and still killed me. Should I not have a major reduction in damage. I mean I also had well over 10k def with the barb so what does it actually do…
When you run you lose 100% def. → toggle to walk to keep def
Def decreases the chance that a monster will hit you, but overall it’s a very underwhelming stat. Only Barbs and Paladins profit from it if they get their values beyond the 10k and it’s still pretty useless then.
Other stats keep you alive, def is just a bonus.
it’s just straight up hit or miss chance as Odin is sayin’.
no % damage reduction like folks are used to in other games.
For that there’s a specific attribute called Numerical damage reduction.
and character level
Monsters also get significant boosts to their attack rating as the number of players in the game increases.
If the monsters are higher level than you, they have even more chance to hit you.
~stuff that I’ve heard.
This page explains defense in more detail: https://diablo2.diablowiki.net/Defense
For the primary purpose of damage in Diablo 2/D2R, defense is literally just “chance to hit”. There are more complex formulae involved with regard to monster level vs. player level, but outside of the melee classes (Barbarian, Paladin, and specific Druid and Assassin builds), the stat is essentially worthless except on your mercenary, so as to have them die as little as possible from monster hits.
For actual damage reduction, you want to seek out Reduces damage by X% affixes, but don’t go out of your way for those if they prevent you from having optimal gear.
Edit: Grammar/spelling.
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“Defense reduces the chance that a physical attack that uses Attack Rating will be successful.”
This is the best line from the article Tias linked above. Def is considered when looking at the ‘to hit’ aspect of the attacking monster. As mentioned by many others it does not reduce damage, it does not reduce elemental damage, it does not stop elemental attacks from hitting you and it is reduced to 0 when running.
My first question to you is ‘what is hitting you’. Most of the time you get hit by elemental attacks. Those do the most damage especially to people with low resists. Resists is probably the most important defensive mod to worry about, you can be running around with 20K def and easily go down to a lit enhanced boss by just getting hit by his charged bolts flying out of him.
Secondly as a melee char you will take damage, that is a fact of life. Your ability to re-gain that life is probably more important than avoiding the damage. Life Leech is very important for melee/physical attackers so they can get back the life you lost when you got hit.
Let me try create some summary here 
- Defense does affect chance to be hit (as well as your level)
- To play notable role - defense need to be very high and you need to be high level
- Defense rolls first (yes-no) after that rolls block after that dodge/avoid after that DR - saying this chance to hit after 75% block rate between say 75% (w/o shield chance to hit) and say 40% (w/o shield) not that much different 18% for low defense scenario and 10% for high defense case scenario - so for close combat shield with max chance block and max speed of block is far more beneficial than extra high defense
- Defense DO NOT reduce incoming damage
- Defiance can greatly reduce effects of conviction
Very interesting so the name defence really isn’t the straight up defending attacks rather the chance of hitting you. Honestly that sux defence should improve damage reduction, better chance to block and resistant to curses.
No wonder the melee classes are not very good. Maybe if they did the above they would have been on equal footing as the pala, Sora and zon.
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Well … D2 is complex lol - some items do have DR attribute (vampire gaze, dungo, string of ear, shaftstop even shako has it 
). Block has physical cap - 75% (similar to resistance an if you will you can look in the block as “physical DPS resistance”). I am not remember if DR has cap (likely it does)