Lacquered plate is medium armor, it will slow your run/walk speed and that goes for your merc too. Archon plate is the holy grail for all armor runewords. Just run pits/chaos/ancient tunnels with 0mf until you find a 4os AP with a decent roll on def. don’t forget to check white items too, you can socket with larzuk for a guaranteed 4 sockets or use perf amethyst+ral+amn for a 50% chance to add 4 sockets. Idk who told you you need 800 base def to be viable, but they might be pulling your leg. Defense is basically useless in this game