Others have done it better than me too.

I'm been somewhat fascinated recently (as in the last 2 years) with having a lowbie invoker roll through people before shields. My best "success" was an arial that was around 16-5 or so in 50+ hrs and 25 levels. It can be done.

One of the thing Daevryn mentions is knowing the capabilities of your enemies. For a lot of melee characters, they really do most of their damage in raw melee combat. Ergo, you want to either lessen their damage (by getting mobs to tank, damage reduction potions/wands) OR make the fight last shorter. As an invoker using vuln spells, often times you can literally 2-round people.