Help my Shaman: How should I kill things?
 

So I'm playing in <Auld Lang Syne> which means all my gear has to be self found. I'm wearing full banded and have Jewelery up to 170 skill, so some fairly useful pieces. I also have a Midnight Mallet as my weapon. I'm level 22.

I think I'm stuck between the areas of when my melee was decent enough to fight 1v1 andwhen my spells really start to be useful and I'm starting to have a lot of trouble.

For example, I'm out on the Gargoyle island in The Ocean of Tears and it's taking 80% of a mana bar to kill a blue con gargoyle. I've tried opening with Malaise and then rooting for full duration root, then throwing disease on it, but it'll barely be down to 70% before the root breaks.

What do you veteran Barbarisn suggest?

Until 24 just be a healer in a group. If you insist on soloing lake rathe aviaks come to mind. At your level and without twink stuff life is hard as a solo shaman. It will get better at 24.

Can you explain what makes it easier? Canni? Can I do different stuff?

Canni, regen and envenomed breath. You'll love those spells.

Every spell level increases your power pretty much.
Canni allows you to create mana. Regen helps you canni more. You need to learn the balance. Canni enough, but not too much. Usually I would canni so my mana was higher than my health and stop. Then canni more as my health went up and my mana went down. :)

Poison dots are much faster than disease dots.

Grouping (or duo/trio) really is the best way. Soloing will get better though at 24.

You're going the classic route: you're really not designed to solo. If you choose to solo, what you need are efficiency enhancing spells, because killing mobs takes a lot of mana when you are relying predominately on dots. These come in two main flavours:

(1) Ways to regen mana faster: Canni + Regen
(2) More efficient dots: Usually disease line for efficiency, but some poison dots are good
(2.a) Your pet dog is used as a dot as well, though some strategies may call for slowing the mob and having the pet tank

The problem with playing as a melee shaman is that your slow spells don't become super powerful until 39 iirc. So if you have a poor ratio weapon, no casted or worn hp regen, and a poor slow....you're just not going to be able to efficiently kill mobs.

Root-rotting mobs is costly in terms of mana, but once you get the ability to increase your mana regen through those spells, you'll be able to kill more mobs per cycle.

As others have said, you're in the dead zone for the Shaman class (which to be honest really runs from the high teens to 34). At 29 with Befriend Animal you can be a lot more efficient solo and from 34 with the pet, it gets much, much better in every situation.

Really, without grouping, you will struggle at least till you get to 29.

I'd also add, that without buying weapons (and a haste item) in the market, your days of tank n spank meleeing are pretty much over till your into your 50s and can get a decent 2h weapon in a dungeon group.

Thanks for the information all!

What do you mean by self found for equipment?

His guild has rules. You can't buy/sell from outside of the guild. You can't have anything you didn't earn on that character, basically.