Thanks for the tips. I'm going to save up for the harpoon and a good shield and play around a bit with root or kiting if I can't melee.

What race you choose isn't the biggest deal; each one has their benefits. Even barbs with their lackluster stats have some sweet gear in the end-game.

Anyway, I soloed my shaman from 1 to 35 or so. It's pretty slow; shamen don't become all that good soloers until canni/regen at 24, and even then it's 34 with their pets that they really hit their stride. From 14 through 33 I would recommend root-dotting. I would even experiment with using diseases exclusively, rather than poisons, which are less efficient (at least once you get Affliction). Diseases kill slower, but Affliction is an excellent spell, and if you're careful, you can root-dot two mobs simultaneously to good effect using diseases only. All your dots stack (including different ranks of the same line) and meleeing hurts a lot until you get regen. AC is still nice for when root gets resisted or partial-resisted, which is a lot, so that banded set will come in handy. Meleeing I wouldn't do a lot of until you get your pet.

As for where to level, I did South Ro from 9 to my high teens (mainly wandering undead at your level), if I recall correctly. After that, I headed to East Karana (gorge hounds), South Karana (aviaks and other wandering mobs), East Karana (crag spiders), Qeynos Hills (two guards and two Millers outside of Surefall Glade who you can take out two at a time), South Karana (gnolls outside of Infected Paw), and North Karana (the human guards at the bridge to South Karana and at the nearby tower). All of these areas were relatively easy to get spots at (granted, there was some competition for the gnolls outside of Paw, but there are wanderers you can take out as well; just watch the fuck out for Brother Qwinn) and had plenty of mobs to kill. The trouble with soloing as a shaman is that especially in the lower levels you have practically no crowd control, so you need to find single- or double-pulls or do some shenanigans to split the camps.

After I hit 35 or so, I got fed up with soloing (camping the same 3-5 guards in North Karana over and over again got to be a major drag) and went to Lower Guk to group. Then I went to Solusek B. Lately I've been soloing again since grouping's gotten a little monotonous (if you wanna go 40-50 in Sol B you're basically confined to one of two camps), but grouping is definitely an option to keep in mind in general. As a shaman, you're not really a good soloer until late in your career, and you're desirable to groups throughout.

I never root/roted on my 70shm. Shaman can take dmg and he is also decent at melee! Shaman really should not root/rot after canni/regen at 24 - unless ur on mob that hits really hard. What you need to do is maximazie your melee dmg. Get a good weapon + procs and face the mob! Also, dont underestimate 2HB! As shaman I would keep my 1hb, piercing and 2hb skills maxed, cause you never know what weapon you will get and there are some great 2hbs for shammy that will do great deal of extra dmg!

Hey Estu thanks for that I was actually planning to go out to the Karanas. My buddy has a level 20 mage I can duo with. Forgot about the same line dot stacking, thats handy.

As far as procs go I have a treant staff but all it does is root... does 20 dmg per hit though so thats nice since my dots only tick for 13 total right now.

If you're twinked with leet gear then yeah, it would make more sense to melee. Otherwise I think it's debatable that meleeing is better at 24 than root dotting. At 24 I had full banded, a bark shield, and a gloomwater harpoon. I didn't find meleeing efficient until I got my pet; before then, I just took a lot of damage in exchange for not that much I was dishing out, even with slow on the mob and haste on myself. I found that the best way to solo exp at those levels was to simultaneously root-dot two blues with sicken and affliction.

I have a 60+ sham on live (original toon actually) and a 32 sham on p99.

On live I did lots of meleeing, however this time around on p99 I'm going the root/rot method more often than not.

Honestly, it seems a lot better because while those dots are ticking away you can sit and regen mana (canni in between mana ticks for even more goodness) and end a fight vs a dark blue/even con at nearly full mana.

Basically you are able to combine your downtime and dot time so you do not have to have an extended med break.

If I am being lazy instead of root/rot and med I will sometimes just dot up the mob and chain nuke it to death and then go afk for 5 minutes while medding up.

Come velious all the trolls and barbs are gonna be sitting in a semi circle watching the ogres solo dragons. Then I am gonna walk up to them all with my epic pet and be like sup guys can my pet get some buffs I am gonna go solo some dragons like the ogres, and the trolls and barbs will be full mana cause they won't be fighting them.

Or Lodizal. Don't forget soloing Lodizal ;P

Is it really impossible to solo as the other races or just harder and riskier?

Edit: And can you duo them if you can't solo because of this?

You can still solo west wastes dragons as a non ogre (yeldema should be doable in horrible gear immediately upon dinging 60 if you have torpor) but the other ones that AOE might require some more gear and an instant click like coldain ring 8+ and or black fur boots.

I don't see kunark dragons being soloable until in full NToV gear, and even then you'd only have 5k hp or so, but lodizal, stomples, and other easily slowable things shouldn't be a problem.