Defense protects against everything that has TAI (taijitsu) in it, and Resistance against NIN (ninjitsu), whether it be a mystery, basic attack, chase, etc.

There is no defense against poison and ignite as far as I know, and every basic attack is a taijitsu based move, unless it states otherwise in the description.

Well, according to the tooltip, resistance protects against ninjitsu damage, unless I'm blind and can't see the proper description.

Well that's probably why I missed it - I barely have enough time to read the loading screen tooltips because I literally only have like 2-3 secs lol... fast loading ftw!

But in regards of you shedding new light on this matter, that's a huge game changer. Thanks for sharing.

Everything else should've been explained to you, however.