Rares and Champions...

[Chesspiece_face]

You don't seem to get it. So let me spell it out for you in nice big capital letters:

THE-LOOT-SYSTEM-IS-BROKEN. THE-FREQUENCY-THAT-YOU-FIND-ITEMS, REGARDLESS-OF-WHERE-YOU-FARM, IS-INCREDIBLY-LOW. THUS, YOU-ARE-FORCED-TO-USE-THE AUCTION HOUSE.

And because the quality of gear that drops is dependent on difficulty, you HAVE to farm the highest possible difficulty in which you can play to get the possible gear that is available (an exception being Act 4 of hell difficulty, which is required to farm supposedly to stand a chance before taking on Inferno).

There is no nice way to rebut this so I won't try. Your assertion is absolute and complete Bullshit. This is coming from someone who has picked up items here and there from the AH and still 90% of the gear I am using in Hell has been self obtained. Some of the key pieces of gear I am still using is Lvl 26-30 req. Other than a few key pieces (IE your weapon) You can easily play in Hell difficultiy with iLvL 26-45 items. You just need to know what stats to look for on those particular pieces.

Again, I have been incredibly lucky with drops. But if I were to trade many of my ilvl 44-50 items for ilvl 26-35 items with similar qualities of the ilvl 26-35 items I am currently using in Hell I would still be able to progress.