Congrats man...defense is my favorite thing to do in AV because I can do well at it. Offense is ok too but harder without a healer keeping my group up when there's a large crowd that I'm attacking.

Suggestion...start an arena team right away even if you end up trying but losing all the 10 games a week. They go fast and you'll still get arena points banked to get a couple of nice things before hitting 71 (arena points are wiping at 71). If your rating falls too low just disband it and start a new team, I asked Customer Service and you can do this every week if you were willing to spend the 200 gold. Customer Service said no problem. Just don't intentionally lose, try and play it. As my gear got better I was able to finally take out 2 of 5 but never won one on my own. I eventually re-teamed with 4 + healer and we almost got to 1700 one week. This past week was kinda bad for us but we had not been playing at all for the week and my partner is busy with levelling his mb team and I've been busy with trying to get the coin for my epic flyers.