Feedback/help on retal setups

I’ve been playing around with my first retal character the last few days since they made some changes to the sentinel set and getting through all the main quest bits was fun. Obviously to get the callagadra helm I had to kill her once, and even on elite I was getting bashed with my original setup:

https://www.grimtools.com/calc/YNn0dO9V

The stats seemed sufficient on paper but I just wasn’t having the tankiness I saw in countless vids. Said screw it and swapped to 3p stoneguard and markovian medal and it made a monumental difference.

https://www.grimtools.com/calc/p25lqklN

I probably didn’t have to move but I did while being safe as I just wanted to secure a kill so it took around 4 min. So I guess my question is what is that tiny breakpoint that wasn’t achievable with the first setup that made callag so hard, while the second setup was a joke?

Ah see I didnt look at proc buffs on I though u made a typo lol. I saw u had a soldier variant of sentinel of the three set, would that be the only viable way to have the necessary armor for the 4 set to shine?