Urgent Thug advice needed

[moderation]

What is more important, defense or protection? I tried testing out a very high protection build with a full suit of black plate, but he wound up getting fatigued and criticaled a lot, then I tried a less protection, less fatigue build which seemed to survive pretty well against armies of 50-100 melee units. Maybe it's possible to get high protection to work if you balance things out better though.