Shammy - GFG or Icewurm Fang + Sarnak Shield?

[loramin]

Shaman melee damage is almost meaningless. Your poison DoT does more damage, your disease DoT does more damage, hell even your pet does more damage. The vast majority of the time your JBB will also do more damage, so really all your melee weapon is giving you is a very small amount of damage in-between casts/JBBs.

As others have said, spending a ton of money optimizing that minimal damage isn't ideal. So what should you get?

Mage Focus Weapon - any one of these will let you click it (from inventory) to cast Reclaim Energy (kill your pet and give you back your mana). By casting, conning your pet, and reclaiming him if he's too low level you can play with a higher level pet on average, "optimizing" your pet damage, and almost for free (the quests aren't hard to do yourself and only require one gem IIRC).

Ikky BP (or Fungi if you can somehow afford it) - More HP regen = more mana (via Cannabalize) = more DoTs = more damage.

Beyond that there's not a lot you can do to improve your offense, so then it makes sense to increase your defense (AC/HP and to a lesser extent Stamina and resists) ... but honestly even if you add 30 AC I doubt you'll actually notice a real difference. If it was me I'd just stop spending at that point and start saving: one of the only other ways you can improve DPS (your epic) is going to cost about 100k, as is Torpor when you hit 60.

Spending money on minor armor upgrades won't really make a noticeable difference, but having 8k (or 3k if you buy an Ikky BP) towards one of those big purchases will help.