The defense card that didn’t end the turn was the only one that made sense using in the end for me. I think defense only is useful if you know you’ll defend more than the monsters hurt so you can build up, or if you get an extra turn by it.
One thing I thought about was that ranged attacks have -1 penalty for both sides when done in melee range, that way it is more fine to hurt closing the gap too, I think.
Yeah, defense cards were pretty under-powered (I bumped them in strength a couple times too!). They're also situationally useful when a step or two away from an enemy and waiting for them to close, I think. But in a melee, yeah, they're hard to justify using. Ranged attacks having a penalty in melee's a good idea, also would have made having just high-damage ranged cards feel more balanced (and could then buff up the damage on those as they're then more situational...)
