Defense increases right after The puppet takes damage if it's of the same type if a water maneuver is present.
Defence seems to increase based on type of physical damage and magical damage tested on colibri where melee attack was doing 70ish dmg and with water manuevers present the colibri was only doing 30ish dmg.
With a Flan Fire III did about 500 dmg to the automaton and then a second fire III with steam jacket activated during the first one did about 300 dmg.
Rate seems to be 30% Redux with 1 maneuver.
35% with 2.
40% with 3.
The Steam jacket will reset if you overload or no water maneuvers are present.
The steam jacket seems very little effected by Overdrive if at all.