Verno wrote on Jun 12, 2012, 11:05:
The game isn't really difficult at all until Inferno IMO, I can't even recall dying unless server lag was involved until I hit Inferno. So I mean in that sense you're right, you don't need the AH...until Inferno. Inferno Act 1 is a whole different thing from Act 2 beyond though, you need the AH to gear up for the latter because the drops simply don't happen in Act 1. The only way I geared up for the later acts of Inferno was abusing resplendent chest spawns and treasure goblins, I was lucky because I got it done before they got hotfixed. Now gearing up for that content involves a significant amount of gold which keeps increasing daily due to botter gold flooding the economy.

Melee classes have it a lot worse than ranged in this regard, ranged can get away with having a good weapon but melee need a shitload of armor, all resist, vit and main stat gear. My buddy is a Barb who practically melts when anything touches him in Inferno Act 2 despite spending over a mil in AH gear.

These are things they've admitted already are problems and are looking into addressing but in the meantime that's not much of a consolation to people trying to do this content.