He has the defense skill of a level 2 at level 16. Of course he's not going to tank well.
Defense being hard to raise if you neglect it is a very, very well known phenomenon and is entirely accurate. Our skill-up difficulty values are pulled from the client. If you don't keep up with raising the skill then it becomes very hard to raise because it can only raise on a successful miss. If the skill is near zero then mobs will almost never miss you if your skill is super low and you keep leveling. The math on avoidance is precise.
In fact I always tell new players that they absolutely need to tank level 1 mobs to max defensive skill once they hit level 4 otherwise they'll outpace their skill and won't be able to raise it without arena visits. On severs with experience bonuses you'll notice this more because you out-level your skillup rate. Quarm has the 20% bonus on at least.
Incidentally the cast time on the level 16 nuke is 2.5 seconds and NPC attack delays at low levels is 3 seconds.
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