I have made several runs and gotten some better eq and last night ran with a pair of chain light shammys. I did much better at holding aggro from those two then the one I was talking about in the previous post. They seemed to also hold off for a second or two which prolly made all the difference.
Right now I am just over two bars from 79 and only using trash eq I find when running. Initially I bought some *ok* eq at level 62-65 range but since then I have just used whatever I found as drops or greed rolls. My mage is now broke with an empty bank since I sold or traded everything he was not using to get nice level 80 equipment but my defense rating and GS should make a huge jump in 1.1 levels