You only have to chase them if you push them so that they end up farther from you than before. What I had in mind was that you would end up in the square they had previously occupied, and they would end up one square back, so still adjacent and still in melee range. This would be extremely useful in situations where you are surrounded: you can use a charge attack to push one or two enemies away from the rest so you can fight them alone before turning back to the others. If you're fast enough and smart enough, you might even be able to push enemies around to get most of them in front of you in a narrow passageway where they can no longer flank you.

Somebody (can't remember if it was you) said somewhere that he had a ridiculous amount of gold by the time he reached the door in dlvl 14, and that he didn't really see the point of having so much gold. That just left me shaking my head. It's true that you can get by reasonably well by just using the gear you find, but if you want a particular boost (e.g. magic resistance), you need to check the inventory every time you shop and buy up anything that has the desired trait. This will use up some of that money burning a hole in your pocket, and it's pretty much the only way to get a decent amount of magic-resistant gear. By the time I hit dlvl 5, almost all of my gear granted magic resistance. By the time I first encounter magic-using enemies, all of my gear grants magic resistance: rings of shielding, amulet of shielding, helmet of shielding, armor of shielding, weapons of shielding, etc. If you hope to find it laying around, you're not going to find enough in time--you have to buy some of it if you want really good magic resistance.

Ah, I see what you meant by that.  It could be cool as a positioning tool, maybe this is the beginning of an entire shield tree.  Shield Push, shield bash, shield wall, and something else.

Yeah, that was me.  I actually was doing what you said, although I didn't invest in mresist gear, as I was just breezing through on casual.  I honestly found so few upgrades going through 14 Dlvls and checking the shop 1-2 time every level.  It also would make more sense to have that many multiple sets of gear if we could save sets of gear and change on the fly.  Otherwise, by the time you swap, you're surrounded and in trouble :(

It's also a huge balance problem if everyone chooses shielding (magic-resistant) equipment over all of the alternatives and scale armor is the obvious choice of armor.

EDIT: Also, I only had one set of gear, not multiple sets. The problem with constantly upgrading at the shop is that you only get half your money back when you sell your old stuff, so my gold balance tended to fluctuate between 2k and 6k. It might have made sense to keep a second set of stuff optimized for non-magical enemies, but like you said, switching out is too much trouble.

I haven't had too much time to play around with my defense only build, but I did have a few thoughts on the spells as listed in the guide link on the website.

Multi shot is better than I gave it credit for.  150% damage to both targets.  Noice.

Health Regen is kinda meh.  2% regen max.  Berserk is useless given that regen.  You'll never kill something quickly enough to make it useful, plus it's only 60% increased damage at max rank for your health to drain insanely fast.

Miracle, why does it have only a chance to work?

Overload is hands down better than frost.  Blizzard and Circle of Flame both seem cool, just hope we can figure out the mana situation to make then viable.

Scale is still the best armor trait.  the others don't even come close.

Axes and swords are exactly the same.  Shouldn't be.  I'd increase swords to 15% (18.75% would be better) per level, and give Axes a 6.25% chance to stun per level.  Max level is 25%, stun should be 1 or 2 seconds.

Also would like to see Whirlwind attack, skill progression just like multshot, only obviously 1 square away, not in range.