Slotting Hide?

Okay, so I've recently started playing my Stalker in a serious way... and I've begun to look a bit at optimized slotting. At the moment, I've got no extra slots in Hide, and the one I do have is, I think an endred. I've been working from the assumption that Hide, like other typse of stealth and invis, looses a large portion of its defence-buff when you attack, thus making it not worth slotting for defence.

Question is, am I right? Or should I pop a couple of DeffBuff ench in Hide as well?

Well depending on your primary, but hide provides a really nice def bonus. I'd deffo add 3 def buffs to it if you are /sr or even /kin or /dark. Not as important on /regen or /ea, but still valuable

I thought hide had pretty good defence against AoE attacks whilst hidden, but that once revealed the defense against AoE dropped into single figures.

I think it's designed that way to give you a chance of staying hidden if there's lots of AoEs going off in the area but not to actually give you any real defence.

Yeah, I see slotting hide practical only if you want to go through damagedealing AOEs or damage auras to AS somebody.

In PvE the standard slot with a defense SO has almost always done the job for me. And as /dark I am without additional AoE defense. Most mobs´ accuracy will be near the floor anyway.
Large Longbow spawns with zillions of grenades and flamethrowers going off are risky because of the sheer amount of AoEness, but otherwise there is not much point in slotting Hide for PvE.
In PvP however it might be useful if you just have to attack the guys with the slotted damage auras.

In hide its 3.75% melee/ranged 37.50% AoE unslotted
3 slotted its 5.9% melee/ranged 59.% AoE def
and thats all versions of hide.

Surpressed hide is 1.875% def to all
Its very possible to get 80-90% AoE def for PVP tho.