30 Jan 2007 at 16:23 - 6
If you're starting now, take Me, because it's easier to lvl up to 20 if you go into PUG's with interrupts+Healing. After you reach 20, you should have enough money to buy:
a) +20% to enchants mod on an axe(18% is probably better if you're on a budget)
b) Superior Healing Rune - People don't mention this, but you need to save to buy this one. It's the expensive part. IF you luck out, you can buy it cheaper from players, but most people just sell it on rune trader. Its about 4k.
c) Ascetic armor. Get this one on LA, since it's the cheapest place, and you don't need armor anyway.
The offhand you get by doing Cities of Ascalon. It's easy. As you make some more money, buy a totem axe (3k-5k, pay no more). The setup I used to "get rich" is the following:
6+3 Healing
Max Smiting
rest into Divine
Skills:
Healing Breeze||Prot Spirit||Zealot's Fire||SoJ||Blessed Aura||Mending||Balthazar's||Essence
You don't need Blessed signet, no matter people tell you on guides. Just Activate Spirit and start aggroing. When the first guys hit you (let them), you get enough energy to Use Breeze. Then just cast Zealot, start looping PS and HB. when you can't move because of too much aggro, use SoJ and continue to loop. Aggro does scatter, but they come back.
Start on Hydras outside Augury Rock (learn to time HB and PS correctly after meteors knock you down), then move on to Trolls, Sand Elems outside Hero(really hard run, but fast), and eventually Snake Dance (Hardest because of Heretics, but longest and most rewarding also).
If you get specially good at it, you can IDS farm with a wand (Hit imp with wand and back up, they don't cast spells, only shoot at you. Use soj and wait).
Btw, I'm currently in love with snake dance: If you manage to go through the initial groups of dwarves, you get to the best Foes i've ever had as a 55: Tundra Giants. Oh I love them. They come in huge groups, and they're rangers, so they don't get knocked down or scatter from SoJ. They just hit you until they die. They frequently leave Giant's Boots with runes in them, I've gotten 3 sup fires and 2 sup death magic so far. Ont he way there you get big groups of trolls too. Be warned though, The giants use stomp once each, and the Azure Shadows you meet on the way have Signet of Judgement, so expect one knockdown from each.
Hope it helps.