Defense in Ultimate Ascent

[Grim Tuesday]

We've watched 7 weeks of Ultimate Ascent and everyone is getting ready for one more. I've heard over the course of the season that UA is an 'incredibly defense heavy game' and a game where 'defense is completely ineffective and useless'. I'm curious as to how these arguments are backed up and if there are any numbers behind either of them.

So my question is: How useful is playing defense in Ultimate Ascent? What techniques are there that people do that are not useful? Which techniques for defense actually are worth deploying?

Before this thread gets started, I need to qualify that 'defense' is a massive umbrella in Ultimate Ascent: There is full court shooter defense, Cycler defense and 50 pt climber defense, etc... all are certainly different and each has its own intricacies. It may be valid to say that defense on cyclers isn't worth playing but it certainly may be on full court shooters.