Two things to wrap this up:
1) I've said it before in this thread, there is no reason to gear for trivial encounters. They are trivial by definition. You need to gear for the hardest encounter you will be facing. AoW is used as the benchmark. It hits so hard that AC is irrelevant, but it is not the only mob in the game that hits that hard. If a mob is a redcon and flurries, stacking HP is the only way to live. You're wrapping all of these mobs up into the example when you mention AoW. SKs end up tanking such mobs in ToV. What other use would they have for raiding since they don't tank AoW themselves?
2) When leveling, using a fungi trivializes everything. Get a fungi first. You can't complain about the cost of a fungi in this thread when people are throwing suggestions like Narandi's Crown around. Being an Iksar or Troll stacks with fungi, making it even better. You know how you fully take advantage of the fungi and the regen? By stacking HP. Raising your health pool raises the effective healing. If I stack HP on my SK alt to have 2000+ HP at level 50 and yours only has 800hp, that doubles, triples, quadruples, etc the effect of that fungi every single time my health ticks above 800hp.
In group content (OP did mention grouping), spells keep aggro.
Disease Cloud is level 9 and costs 10 mana.
Vampiric Embrace lasts around 2-7 minutes and costs 30 mana. You don't really need to cast anything else, so mana pool doesn't matter there. You're not going to gear DEX just for that spell, or STR just for DPS, because your fungi will allow you to literally bore mobs to death while your group takes care of healing and DPS. It is your job to tank. Clarity + Narandi's crown makes it so that you never even have to sit or med.
If you're fear kiting into the 50s, I admire you're dedication. I've always hated fear kiting because swing timers don't really sync with your location very well as the mob is running away. I hate standing right on top of the mob just to see the "You cannot see your target from here" or "Your target is too far away" messages.
It's doable. Slow/painful, but doable. And still, it's trivial. I'd focus more on surviving when a fear wears off on higher level mobs rather than dealing 1 or 2 more damage every third swing or stacking gear for a spell that procs for less than 30 damage. You'll be sitting between fights, either way.
And who is going to be able to solo those mobs better? The 800 HP SK who is gear focused on STR/DEX who can only take 4 hits before he's less than half health? Or the SK with 3 times his HP and can stand toe to toe in melee against the mob while recasting fear?
What happens when you get an add? I can just fear them and shrug them off while I finish my primary target where you'll have to FD at the first sign of trouble.
And guess what? Which strategy works best at level 1? Stacking HP or stacking STR/DEX?
In other words, get a fungi and stack HP or get wrecked.