I'm going to quickly test to see if defs stay when you switch skills. My guess is that they do. Give me a moment to forget and relearn.

They do.

Alright, they do, and thanks for telling me the results also.

Heh. Sylphas once switched from Moondancer to Hartstone (was it the third time?) and got both Drawdown and Stagform defs at the same time.

Yep! Took me a bit of wheedling to skip novicehood so I wouldn't have to log off and lose Drawdown, but it was so worth it to freak out Nejii. Moonburst, Gore, Moonburst, "Hey, wait a minute..."

It's very cool.

In Achaea, didn't guarding use to stay permanently when you switched out of Monk? I seem to recall something of the sort.

EDIT:
Also, for anyone keeping track:
1) Moondancer, Hartstone, Moondancer, Hartstone
2) Faeling, Elfen, Faeling, Elfen, Faeling, Furrikin
3) Healer, Hexen, Healer, Hexen, Runist, Dreamweaver, Runist, Ecologist, Hexen, Healer, Hexen, Dreamweaver, Ecologist

Although I've switched skills many times, this is the first time I've actually stopped to see if the defs stayed. I'm glad that they do, but it is definitely short-lived. Hopefully I will get some gold to reimburse my lesson loss.

Yeah, I had mage defs for a bit as Celestine.

Should have seen some of the crazy defense stacking combos we came up with on the test server....

Interestingly, genderbend seems to stick if you genderbend then forget Dramatics. Permanently.