Armor question

[:1]I have recently acquired an ethereal piece of armor that has about 1500+ defense and was thinking about using it on one of my mercs. My question is which is the smart play: using the socket quest to add sockets, hoping for the best & making some sort of runeword; or going ahead and using Charsi to imbue the armor hoping for great mods and perhaps using a socket quest later? I don't think I can socket it & then try & imbue it. So what is the general consensus?

Many thanks from the old WolfeDude. Lost my old name online & had to start over with the I added to the end.|||

the highsest defense a non socket ethereal grey armor can have is 900.

so something is clearly wrong with ur armor |||And the highest defense a socketed one can have is 1350...|||I apoligize; the armor has a little over 750 defense. I am not sure where my head was when I posted previously (no jokes please). The question still stands though - what are your recommendations?|||I'd cube-socket it and hope for the best (due to a bug it'll end up with over 1100 def). At Larzuk it will get 4 sockets but no additional defense bonus. What to make in it depends on what runes you have available and how many sockets it rolls.|||some players consider the cube bug as cheating, but since u are asking i don�t think ur one of those. so just cube it and hope for the best and be ready to get the worst

there are many useful possibilities, except for 1 soc. so the chance to have an utterly useless one is 1:5|||If I got 4 sockets I do have the runes to make Duress. That would jack up the defense pretty high and give some good mods as well. I would have to figure out what character & merc I would want to play with this kind of high defense armor. Have to think about it for a while.