You forgot to paste the other two parts I wrote.

With skills activated is where Maribelle takes the lead however.

Leanne with 5/5 Skill
209 Attack, 682 Defense (most people won't level up her Skill to 5 though, usually 3-4 max)

Maribelle
596 Attack, 682 Defense

Perfectly matched Defense, but Maribelle has 387 more Attack (over double), and at these numbers Maribelle can actually break the threshold for more Attack to matter. Overall, without Skill active you'd probably want Leanne > Mariblle. With Skill active, Maribelle > Leanne.

Stat comparison for Awakening:

50CC60AW80 Bernice
2900 HP, 275 Attack, 595 Defense (+5% AW Passive to Defense)

50CC70AW90 Maribelle
3105 HP, 324 Attack, 420 Defense

Maribelle has +205 HP, +49 Attack, but -175 Defense (205 if you count in Bernice's Awakening Passive). Maribelle still comes out slightly ahead in HP and Attack, but the difference in Defense is even more obvious here.


With Skills active:

Bernice
275 Attack, 1129 Defense

Maribelle
648 Attack, 840 Defense

Maribelle has +373 Attack (also more than double), but still -289 Defense. In this case without Skill, Bernice > Maribelle. With skill active, it depends on what you need. If you actually need to tank something, Bernice >> Maribelle by even further gap. But if you need the Heavy Armors for the sole sake of their Block 3/4, but need to kill things ASAP, Maribelle > Bernice.

Maribelle's Awakening Passive is Shield of Miracles, which gives her a 10% chance to nullify all damage from an attack. Her Awoken Skill changes her skill duration from 40 seconds to 70 seconds, as well as increases the multiplier from 2.0x attack and damage to 2.5x attack and damage; but comes with the downside that you can then only use her skill once per mission.