This is going to sound completely stupid, but what can I do to get my defense to go up? I have tried tanking for groups, fighting trains of red mobs with a healer standing by, nothing seems to work. I am 34 now and I kid you not my defense is 17. Can someone give me some advice?

for a few lvls after i would finish for the night i would go to free port and find a blue pally or guard near the zone line in the town and beat on him for a while with a regen or fungy on i got pretty good raises also helped raise bind wounds.
best thing i could think of for ya is find someplace with things that don't hit you all that hard and just let em lay into ya for a while i used to get pretty good raises fighting seafurys back in the day too.
Castigar 57 Dwarven Rogue Tarrew Marr

When raising defense, make sure you do not have any sort of damage shield. Makes your offense go up when you get hit. :/

Other then that, you just need to get hit more. I know that advice sounds obvious, but there's not much else to say.

Have you trained your dodge, parry and riposte skills? Are those going up normally?

Dodge, Parry, and Riposte all are maxed for my level. Thank you for the advice about damage shields though, that was a fact I was unaware of. I think I'll head to Paladul Caverns and play with the fiends and see if I can't get it to go up.

Thank you for the advice.

Another way that seems to work pretty good is to duel a friend that is same level as you or a little higher. Try to find a pally or someone that can heal you and go to a nice safe spot (total newb zone with no wandering guards or anything, right at the book in everfrost is a fave spot of mine) and then wail away on each other. Just do this taking breaks every now and a again to you both of you back up, unless you have a healer watching you and healing you both.

I did this with a friend of mine to raise hand to hand and defense skills. We put weapons in a bag and set there punching each other for what seemed like hours. Worked like a charm.

Not sure if this would work, but you could try grouping with a Bard - get him to play the heal song and get a blue mob to attack you. Pull it to a safe spot and just let it beat on you for a while.
The bard should keep you healthy and you could both probably go afk for the whole time... Only trouble is the mob might aggro onto the bard coz of the heals - not sure about that though...

Rumors want it that AGI helps raising that skill. Get a shammy to make Agility on you and try it out. I know I had this problem also, defense skill was always behind... Even now at 61 it is 244 and not capped.

Hope this helps.

Edit: Small typo.

I do not think you can get skill-ups for attacking or being hit by another player, at least, not on blue servers.

You *can* get skill-ups for attacking and being hit by a pet.

Yep mage or necro pet will get you skill ups.

Find the lowest possible blue con mobs, Marus Seru and Dawnshroud should probably be good. Load up on AC gear and have whoever PL'ed you babysit you while you solo. Don't use damage shields, not only do they raise offense instead of defense like Sincro said but the mobs will die faster and you'll just go further into the hole. Also try to avoid fighting slowed mobs.

If you can't find someone to heal you, grab a ton of bandages, a new BP with higher AC and go solo. You really want to have your defense in the 180-200 range before you hit your 40's or you'll probably never catch up.

Well thanks to the advice from here, I went to Sol A with my boyfriend's cleric healing me and just kept training both of us, Defense is now up to 126 and steadily rising. Thank you all for the advice.