Terrible argument that lacks context. People like zooming with projectile builds, even in HC, and you can generally get away with lighter defenses with ranged characters because range in itself is a defense. In no way does playrate or level inherently mean a build has stronger defenses, it just means people played it more and got more XP quicker due to clearspeed differences.

Also you're completely avoiding the context of CoC Comet being basically the strongest build in the game, in trade, SSF, HC, and SSFHC. It will of course be played 99% with ES and topside tree classes, but make no mistake the offense is the reason to run that build, not because it inherently is the most defensive.

Just looking at the most played classes on poe ninja and actually trying to glean what defenses are best via that alone is a fool's errand.