With this gear, is there a build that can get me through A2?der=0><

[jmlowry]

http://imgur.com/cqHdh

Clearly not the best, but I have no gold and really don't want to farm A1 for hours. I die so fast in A2, even post patch. Any tips on builds/runes/CHEAP upgrades?

[Lucas S]

Mediocre HP, mediocre resists, low damage, low block, low armor, no LOH.

If you have no gold for AH upgrades, Warden/butcher runs are your best bet for now I'm afraid

[Peppe]

I think you could probably grind it out.

Drop stomp and seismic slam.

Don't know your playstyle, but try adding two of these:
revenge with provocation.
leap with iron rune.
threatining shout - falter rune or fear rune.

Hopefully impunity rune on your shout.

[jmlowry]

This build is working great. Thanks. Doing much better in a2.

[DeadInside.DOA]

It sounds like you are having a better time now with the above suggestions but here's some more input. This is only speaking from my experience with sword+shield which is how I have been playing through Inferno (pre 1.0.3). First off I would suggest getting resists up. Look for gear with All resists on it and 100+ Vit or Str or a combo of the two like 75 Str + 75 Vit. As your life pool and resists get better the champion/elite packs will become more tolerable and those are what you will be wanting to kill anyway to get your 5 stacks of NV for farming.

Try to get a shield with 26+ block on it. It will help a ton. Preferably what you want is The huge white shield model, this is the one that blocks between 3-4k each hit. Try to find a cheap blue one with +block and that will get you buy for quite a while. The build I use is very defensive and let me solo Act 1-2 when the mobs hit much much harder then they do now. Since they hit for less since the patch I have been able to gear more offensively. The quickest way to increase your dps fast is with crit chance and crit damage. There are full dps crit builds out there but if you have been struggling early on and don't have a lot of gear the defensive route can work great for you.

This is the build I use/d:

http://us.battle.net/d3/en/calculato...RVk!bVc!acaZcc

Your main attack is Frenzy and sidearm gives you a good AoE attack. Revenge is your huge AoE damage ability and your main way of keeping your life topped off. War cry+Impunity are obvious. Leap and Charge give you alot of mobility but with their rune options Charge also becomes another way of regaining your life as it gives 8% life per enemy hit in its path. Leap increases your armor by 300% runed. Ignore Pain with the longer duration is what you will use to survive large packs and heavy damage. Since this build uses no Fury the passive of Berserkers rage increases your dps 25%.

Generally I will leap into a pack giving me the armor boost and start building up fury. Pop revenge every time it comes up for life and damage. Once the defensive bonus from Leap is gone you can pop Ignore Pain for 7 seconds of almost immunity. Here is where some Life on hit can help but is not a requirement. Once IP is up you can either releap for the defense again or if you need to get away Charge away or through packs to regain life. With Charge and Leap you can dodge alot of elites/champs powers since Charge gets you are of Jailer and both are great ways to dodge frozen and get out of desecrate and plague spots.

Try to increase your Str since it gives you damage and armor. It looks like your resists are with Warcy though I don't know if you have impunity, aim for 700-800 to see a huge increase in survivability going forward in Act II. Fire and physical resistance are the most important. Try to keep an even 1:1 between Str and Vit. Again this is purely my playstyle which has been more of a tank than some may prefer. Good luck!