Imo from playing multiple shamans to 60 and playing in Velious in mind:

Ogre is the best with frontal stun immunity for soloing in Velious specifically, then Troll for stats/regen, Iksar for regen, Barb for being able to visit your favorite good cities. In that order.

The easiest route would be to go barb or iksar and max wisdom so yo have more mana for soloing, then spend 250 on spells and the rest on cheap wisdom gear or a good weapon for the lower levels.

Hardest time for a shaman is 1-33. This is the time when you are stuck without very damaging spells and need to melee at the lower levels to kill things. This is if you are planning to solo, in groups you generally will heal.

Not worth the time farming on your enchanter. There isnt much you can buy with the money you would make that would really boost the experience of leveling your shaman, and at 39 you could easily farm the stuff the enchanter is farming and just get xp toward the shaman instead of xping the enchanter.

Ok, I decided I'm going with the Iksar. Any starting stat ideas, aside from full on WIS ( referring to Timelord )

All in wisdom imo, as you have buffs for other stats.

Max stam then wis or vice versa

Put as many points as you can at start into stamina, then the rest into wis. This isn't one of two equal answers, it's the right one.

The question of races has two right answers: troll and ogre. Iksar is basically troll but with much, much lower stats and severely limited gear access at the high end until velious. At 60 and with torpor (which is really, really expensive, you don't just automatically get torpor when you hit 60), the troll regen bonus is pretty negligible. There's considerable debate over how valuable frontal stun immunity is at 60, and answers range from very negligible to very important.

But hitting 60 and raising the money for torpor is not easy. It's very likely, even probable, that you won't reach 60. I mean you didn't on your enchanter, right? All the way up until having torpor, it's pretty well agreed upon that racial regen > frontal stun immunity. And as a 60 shaman with torpor, you're gonna be a bad ass mofo with or without frontal stun immunity. The hard part is getting there. That's why I'd roll troll.

Farm up a bit more cash with your enchanter and twink out your shaman a bit. 5/55 rings and a good weapon are pretty game-changing from 1-34.

/cough *Signature*

reading your guide is what made me start to even THINK about an evil shammy haha I was dead set on a Barb and then I read your guide and began thinking of all the cool shammy evilness there was to be had!

Can you explain why? The Wis vs. Sta section of the wiki seems to break down everything mathematically and show that the case for WIS is pretty strong.

http://wiki.project1999.com/Shaman

Not true, troll/iksar regen at 60 is OP versus other races :)

to be fair at 60 i stoped relying on regen for anything other than, meh, ill just regen that last bit of 10% hp....

Regen is wholy overrated at 60 IMO that is unless you dont have torp.