Your question depends, with/without IO bonuses.
short answer: no
In your primary, you have only 2 defense based powers.
tough hide (5% base) and invincibilty (5%+1% per foe in melee range). fyi, invincibility used to be 1.5% per foe, but unyielding was a -5%. Imho were much better off this way.
at base, with 1 foe, you have 11% defense to all but psi.
TH+inv with 3 SO's, 1 foe you have 17.2%
Invincibility can be powered from 1-10 foes.
at 10 foes (good luck getting that many), you will have 31.2% defense.
fyi, CJ is 2.5% base, and weave is 5% base. combined, thats 7.5% base for both, or with 10 foes (inv+th+cj+weave) your at 42.9% (mid's is your friend, I suggest downloading it).
Softcap is at 45%. Adding manuevers your at 46.4% (with 10 foes in range), but that drops down to 32.4% with 1 foe (e.g. AV).
Still need IO's (res/3% def will do it), but you will need cj+weave. Without them, you will need an additional
without tough+weave, you'll need another 11.7% defense from IO set bonuses. Not necessarily an easy task, esp depending on your secondary for IO set placement.
50 Tanks: Invul/ss, Fire/ice/fire, Ice/em, Stone/fire
WP/Stone, dark/dark, shld/mace
50 Other: WS, SS/dark/sc brute, BS/Regen/WM scrpr, fire/fire/force blaster, rad/kin corr, mind/rad ctrl, ill/storm cntrl
Reactive Armor in your Resists + Kinetic Combat in your attacks + the Steadfast Protection Res/Def IO will get you very close to softcapping Smash/Lethal Defense, the most common damage types.
Don't take the Fighting Pool if you don't want to. It's not necessary and can be easily replaced by a small amount of team support.
Using the strategy Vox suggests, plus using Eradication in the PBAoE attacks, I have a build that gets an Invul/Mace to the soft cap for S/L and has 38% E/NE defense. As was mentioned earlier, it does depend somewhat on what sort of attacks you have; for instance, ST attacks are good for S/L def because you can slot Kinetic Combat in them, and PBAoE attacks will help increase your E/NE defense if you use Eradication. (I had to 4 slot Brawl to get the S/L soft cap on the that Invul/Mace.)
So yes, it can be done for some damage types without Weave, though you have to pick your sets carefully, and you may have to make some unusual slotting choices.
EDIT: Oops, didn't see the mention of skipping CJ in the OP. Without CJ, the Invul/Mace build I mentioned has around 43% S/L defense and 36.4% E/NE. Not *quite* the soft cap, but I agree with Vox that it would be more than adequate for 99% of PVE tanking.
My Characters
Knight Court--A CoH Story Complete 2/3/2012
Thanks for all the comments guys. Guess my second build with be aimed for teaming and defense.
This thread by Call_Me_Awesome has been very helpful to me with my Invuln tank build.
Although it does include using the fighting pool...
It's still worth checking out.
Invuln and Defense Soft Cap
Is it possible to reach the defense soft-cap with INV without get Combat Jumping or Weave, with only one mob fueling the Invinciblity aura? How many mobs would be required to reach the soft without CJ and Weave in your build?
I just hate taking the fighting pool.