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.
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