Shaman Meleeing?

[Wizerud]

If your melee skills are underdeveloped that would have had a lot to do with it. Try lower con but still dark blue mobs to max out all your offense/defense/melee skills and that will make a huge difference. Maxing your defense is reccommended even if you dont plan to melee in your future and low dark blues are the safest way to do it.

[Kender]

i used to melee tank in velious basically using the pet and a manaless dot. i did have my epic spear though so it would go pull with spear, slow, add 2 dots, then melee tank till dead. worked quite well but i had reasonable armour

[quido]

One consideration that is probably easy to overlook is the amount of regeneration a shaman can get at the higher levels. I would probably tank a lot less mobs if I had to blow a bunch of mana healing myself because I regen 5 life per tick. Luckily, popping a squat for a minute with chloro + rage will usually do the trick.

So I guess what I'm saying is I would be more willing to put up with the perils of tanking mobs if it's not a colossal waste of time. Obvious, right? Considering your gear, I wouldn't give it any serious attempt at this point. But it's definitely something to start thinking about if you want to break free from the classic shaman role.

Also, shammies usually spend a lot of time medding/cannying. I spend a lot of canny time meleeing, but I also have a manastone I can click off when the canny isn't the best choice. I usually use my stone if I can. So I guess it's true, even at higher levels, that the value of shaman melee is very gear-dependent. I honestly wouldn't even bother with my melee-getup or swinging at all if it wasn't for the CT hammer, not even for the Naggy hammer.

[Noselacri]

Without great gear, meleeing stops being a viable choice around level 20. Once mobs start doubling for 50+, tanking them isn't efficient unless you're sporting full totemic or better, and even then I wouldn't always do it. You end up having to heal yourself after every fight, and since you won't be medding at all, your killing pace becomes horrible. You also don't do any real damage unless you have one of those high-end 2hb weapons, all of which are pretty expensive.

Just root-rot from 20 to 34. It's not that bad, really; most blue mobs will straight up die to your Affliction+E-breath. Once you get your pet, you can try a few other approaches such as letting it tank or kiting around with it. Also note that Affliction appears to be bugged, or rather hasn't been reverted to its classic stats, so it deals more damage than it should. It currently ticks for as much as Envenomed Breath, lasts twice as long, and costs half the mana. I was gonna report this but I forgot about it until now.

Finally, forget about mana/wisdom. It's not important to a shaman. You'll eventually get some from your gear, which is fine, but don't go out of your way to get it at all. Your first major purchase should be two 5ac 55hp rings, and you should consider getting your totemic set as well. AC and HP are much more important, even if you don't actively tank your mobs all the time. Shamans tank fairly well, it's just that it isn't very effective when soloing for exp because you won't get much mana back and you'll have to spend it on healing yourself. A geared shaman can even tank alright for groups using Drowsy for aggro and with someone else to heal him. You can take the hits, you just can't keep up your damage output and self-healing while doing it until Kunark and Torpor.