When I got tired of the endless farming in normal mode of Diablo 3, I decided to try the challenging mode of Hard Core which would only give you one life. I decide to choose Monk as my Hard Core hero because the skill Serenity can give you another chance to survive in difficulty situations. If you want to try something different, I would highly recommend D3 Hard Core mode for you. This time I would like to share with you something I learned hard way in this mode.
Tip 1: Choose Shield as off-hand. In HC. You are not competing with the high DPS but how long you can survive. Shield can block damage for you as well as high vitality which can increase the health Globe.
Tip 2: Develop it into a habit to search Auction House. You can hardly farm the items you can use at your current process. But you can have a close study of the level price and resell it. With the profit, you could afford to buy the items you want. This would prevent you sell your items at a cheaper price as well.
Tip 3: Skill Serenity only saved for emergency. You can never predict what may happen. When the net becomes too latency, you should leave the game instead of play as usual. Serenity is not used to attack the monsters but to be used to escape from the danger. This is a little different from the normal mode where you could use serenity to hang on a moment and kill the monsters. In HC, you have not enough lives to take a risk especially when your characters are of high Paragon Level.
I have played Hard Core monk for over two months. And generally I would join a team. In a team, you would have more joys where you could share the life experiencing.