The best defense is to mitigate being hit or taking damage to begin with.
Take whatever caster master you’re interested in, and then look at mixing in:
Shaman - Pact + Heart (more life pool, take more damage, more durable); Wendigo (ridiculous how much healing this thing does); Vines (crowd control so you don’t get trampled, most of the game is melee so this stops melee in its tracks mitigating a lot of damage potentially).
Soldier - Menhir’s Will (this is just a crazy heal and stops you from dying, so good); Military Conditioning (more life, more regen, everything; more durable); Shield training (block more often, always good); Overguard (big life regen, more blocking, straight damage absorption); Field Command (more armor, more DA). Soldier gives you the most tank stuff and if you invest heavily into it, you can make tanks that cast on the side if you can find a way to manage the energy.
Demolitionist - Flash bang (confuse targets, total crowd control, if they’re confused they’re not damaging you, so total mitigation); Stun jacks (stun targets, they’re not doing anything to you now, total mitigation); Blast Shield (happens often at only 60% health, decent cool down, flat absorption, maximizes resistances, totally passive, great tanky skill).
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Or, you can mix in stuff that each caster mastery already has.
Arcanstis already have a total mitigation spell, Mirror of Ereoctes, for 3 seconds and a freeze everyone (total mitigation spell), Olexra’s Flash Freeze, that can be spammed every 5 seconds and lasts nearly 5 seconds. Also Maiven’s Sphere adds more absorption and reduced damage.
Occultists have Frailty (slows things down, most things are melee, this means you’re not being attacked), Blood of Dreeg (heal and regen), Sigil of Consumption (heals you in an AOE); Possession also adds damage absorption.
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So you can choose to either mitigate things with raw tanking and healing. Or you can mitigate things by simply not allowing them to attack in the first place (crowd control, stuns, etc).
Devotions come into play too.
ShieldMaiden grants a lot of blocking bonuses.
Turtle gives you damage absorption pretty often.
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Stacking a bunch of health regen isn’t going to work in Ultimate or Gladiator, you get hit for 2~3k or more by trash mobs, and heros and bosses hit for much, much more often, and your health pool is probably going to be 9k or so, so health regen doesn’t do anything there. Health regen in that situation just mitigates enemy damage over time effects (bleed, poison, etc). It’s good to have it. But you won’t live through a fight with 1k health regen. You need large scaling flat heals, regen, absorption, armor, blocking, stunning, etc. My point is, you need layers of defenses, you can’t crutch on one thing, it won’t work for everything.
Very best,
