I'm actually very uncertain about optimal killing methods as a lowbie shaman. I vaguely remember having trouble killing two dark blues at those levels. I definitely remember I root/rotted, and I now have doubts as to the actual leveling efficiency of this strategy. Yes, I preserve most of my mana by the end of the fight, but relying on dots as sole dps means the kills take too long and I end up wasting some mana on re-rooting. Looking at wiki, the lowest level mob in SolA has 600 hp, meaning I'd need to keep affliction up for 8.5 minutes to kill it! Infectious cloud cuts that down a lot, but if you're camping a static spawn, you're effectively lengthening its spawn cycle by root/rotting. 6 minute spawn + 5 min kill is an 11 min cycle.
I'm currently leveling a shaman on Red, and he's lvl 14 atm so I'll be figuring this stuff out soon. I'm using
http://wiki.project1999.com/Withered...of_Widdershins and I'm interested in trying to joust with mobs for med ticks. Against a rooted mob, step up and swing, then step back and sit in time with mana ticks. My effective delay will go from 42 to 60, but the mob's effective delay will go from 30 to 60. So a 30% melee dps loss for me, 50% for the mob. At lvl 20, hitting every med tick is another 100 mana per minute. That mana can be used to heal after the fight or spent on a nuke after root breaks but before reapplication.
If you expect a fight to last longer than 1 minute, affliction gives you better returns than using that mana on another spirit strike. I didn't use infectious cloud when I was leveling, but it looks to be pretty OP against two mobs. Root them somewhat close together, infectious cloud one and affliction them both, then finish the fight with your preferred method (some balance of nukes, sitting on your butt, meleeing).
24 changes things quite a bit. Canni effectively means that every 50 damage you take just cost you 20 mana. If you've got a fungi and GFG or something, you can just ignore this inefficiency, but for us mere mortals, simply not getting hit is likely more efficient than jousting or tanking. You also get a strong new poison dot, so your dps doesn't actually suck too badly when root/rotting.
Then there's 29. You get a new slow, gheal, quickness, lvl 24 max animal charm, and no new dps spells. I remember that I just sucked it up and sat in a group as healer/buffer til 34 (and hated it). This time I think I'm going to head to LoIO, charm a lvl 24 grimalkin near windmill, and kill sarnaks with pet + rot until it stops giving decent exp. I'll have to play around with quickness and tagars to see if they can be useful, but I think this will be a blast.
Shit starts to normalize out at 34, though, with fewer wild swings in our effectiveness.