I have a few HC characters that I have soloed up to normal baal. I am wondering what gear would be best to start NM in? lvl 45 max gear. I have a barb, necro, and zon.

i would stop leveling all the chars.

i would convert the barb into a support bo barb so you have 20+ bc wc ba minimums and level that barb until that is met

in another window i would make a new char a mf via bliz sorc and put the highest quality gear on that char possible. block fcr defense life

level the sorc with enchant (you should have a support enchant sorc right???????) use a raven claw + death gloves and belt and put a raven claw on your act 1 merc and get everything enchanted. never ever leave town for any char unless you have 20 bc ba wc at minimum levels try for 50+ for these skills its not hard.

stay in norm until about 50 doing safe baal runs and hoard up gear. next jump into nm and bypass all of it and kill nm baal. do cows and nm baal runs for more advanced gear (making spirit cs puting that on everything) skilling up your barb with 3 wc amulet 3 wc sticks, cheap skill gear on him all of this is easy and can be shopped in town. shop act 5 for wc sticks.

try and find low level useful items like peasents crown. vipermages and getting the highest quality versions of that. try and find when you are in hell 4 sock monarches and make spirit then use that until you find a storm shield. finding a storm shield is your goal when you are using a hc char its as important as making infinity or making enigma.

I would not get too concerned about farming normal, you won't have much magic find and it's not worthwhile/necessary to stick around too long. For me I usually just make ancients pledge and stealth and then move on to NM once I am level 40-45. For melee characters you can put 3x tal or ral in a 3os sword as a nice starter weapon.

Act 1 NM I think is a good stopping point, if you want to go slow and steady you can farm Countess for Lore / Spirit / Insight and even Smoke runesets (have to cube 3x Io to Lum). You won't have all the bases yet but you'll find some eventually. Act 1 Andy can provide a lot of nice items too for all your chars.

Also keep an eye out for a 4os Gothic plate / full plate and a 3os Mask, you can put Ptopaz in them as a nice beginner set of mf gear.

Only real danger in NM are souls, just get max light resist and max points in vita and you are good to go