hey Jaggie, it's okay to defoliate, but what may be just plucking some leaves for you for the plant it's actually HST, most of the time it's not necessary or worth it to defoliate because the plant simply needs those leaves to absorb light, plus you don't yet know which leaves will become branches during the flower stretch... I would definitely wait before defoliation maybe see if there are any small flower nodes down the branch that will stay small, if you remove those small flower nodes it will make the other flowers bigger but if you defoliate i guess it will only shock or stunt the plant. hope this helps ! 🚀