I bit into the 'just gotta melee' hype with leveling my shaman initially a long while back, using the traditional budget Poison Wind Censer and as much HP / AC as I could stack on the character. It was rough going, but by picking out low blue level old world mobs and staying patient, reaching level 34 happened. At that point my array of spells + pet allowed me to just level in a more traditional caster fashion, using root, DoT's and DDs, slow, and the pet.
It took me a small bit of time to figure out the best routine of spells and their cast order to be the most efficient vs mob level + HPs they had, and once this was accomplished my kill rate and leveling speed was very rapid. This was on an Iksar Shaman. At level 35 I sold melee oriented gear and picked up effective budget casting gear focused on wisdom, HP and Mana stats along with AC. I kept seeing posts of people stating that they fought in melee with their solo shaman to 50+ and I couldn't figure out the value to it. If you're able to mow exp targets down as fast as a Necromancer or Quad kiting druid of the same level using just spells and the pet, that seems to be the way to go.
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