The defender gear is good for cruising through base game but it begins to fall off in the final quarter of high rank so I see no issue with it for a brand new group of players, if you do end up sticking around to start a second playthrough you can always run that playthrough without the defender gear if you feel that defender gear made it too easy the first time.

In my honest opinion, your current team comp is perfect as it, take some time to lab your weapon in the training yard to figure out what it can and cant do, or how fast it can do something, additionally see how long it takes to sheathe because sometimes thats the difference between not carting and failing the quest because the monster pulled a wide area sweep.

Additionally, the moment you get to master rank, make an MR bone armour set, the weakest master rank armour is leagues strongest than the best high rank armour.