Could you describe your "proper defoliation" technique brother.
As far as leaf defoliation is more of an Art than a science. Let me start off by saying that you should never defoliate a sick plant. You must have your nutes and environment dialed in before you try it.
I usually defoliate right before going into flowering if my veg is bushy. If not then you would do it right after they finish their expansive growth cycle which usually lasts 3 weeks, I then get rid off all the big fan leaves and strip them pretty bear, after that you need to flush them with b vitamins and carbs. I use b52 and carbo load. You are stressing the plant. It if they are healthy they will bounce back right away.
After that you must increase the amount of carbs you give your plant. This is when I start doubling the dose of carbo load to make up for the less sugar being produced from plucking the fan leaves, the plant will develop some nice big tops and middles with decent bottoms.
At the beginning of week 6 I do my final defoliation, usually bottom leaves that grew bigger after getting more light. The last few weeks your tops and middles will rippen nice while you watch the bottoms mature and become nice and dense. At the end of your round you will have nice tops middles and bottoms that are very consistent in size up and down. Remember that fan leaves are the sugar factories for your plant. So you must double up on the carbs after you remove them
This is success nutrients feed chart. They are the ones that sell that three a light book.
Notice how they use sugar at rate of 10-12 ml per gallon and how they flush with sugar all the way til the end. If I normally use 600 ml of carbo load on 100 gallons then I would need to be using 1000-1200 ml for a 100 gal reservoir