let me link u my D3 profile: http://eu.battle.net/d3/en/profile/Rogoth01-2220/
my main wizard has most of her gear bought off the AH, never used a single penny of real world money, saved up gold and sold alot of stuff on AH to affrod some stuff, also got a couple of items given to me by friends who quit the game and wanted their items to go to use than just go to some faceless wonder looking to score a great upgrade, as for my alts, excluding the rings on my barb, and the helm on my WD, EVERYTHING they are wearing is self found by my main wizard after playing soo long to get to p100, don't get me wrong ur not gonna find gear over night, it takes time, but isn't that the point? the thrill of the next loot item being the big one?, so i ask, why do u need to uset he AH to get good gear, just spend a long time playing the game without even opening the AH ui and see what happens, i can guarentee u 1 thing, u will find items from simply playing the game that are perfectly adequate, the problem with the vast majority of the playerbase, is they are using godly items as a yardstick, so if something isn't good enough to compete with a BiS item is is automatically trash, which is wrong.