VT named were soloed way before mercs came out. It's been awhile since I remembered, but I was never rich enough to buy Amulet of Necropetance in my earlier, and more unskilled days, so during Depths of Darkhollow (I recall) we got an AA that gives us an instant werewolf illusion for HP, Mana, and such. The instant illusion would allow you to get thru the locked doors in VT, so now the main part is getting the bosses alive. One used to require the FD ring from PoSky (Vermillion Sky Ring), and have the luck that 1 of the 2 charges was successful (it uses the lower version of Feign Death spell, so higher fail rate).
Both of those items -- AoN and VSR -- are classic in theory (not sure if VSR got revamped or not), one from Fear golems and one that is quested from Sky. This meant that at Vex Thall's release, a shaman could technically have the tools to train his way to a boss (barring DT's from Warders), without a means to kill it due to low survival options at that era.
I don't know when the first success was, but my hunch is sometime around Planes of Power since Quiessence was a very nice HoT, and the gear and clicky options provided more survival to do this. Gates of Discord also bumped survival up a lot as well, as well as LDON.
With Totem AA and Werewolf AA, you no longer require the item clickies, and with the survivability of gear, AA's, clickies, along with mercs, this should be trivial. I also recall when I did it around level 80 that the Akhevan Warders would not DT me, so I could skip bosses as I saw fit.
Like most, I did it specifically for Umbracite Swarm Orb and the Abolish Poison arms (at the time we only had Abolish Disease and Purify Spirit spells, and Radiant Cure AA), which rounded out my cure clicky lineup: RGC orb from Frog in Fire, Abolish Disease necklace from Arch Magus in Fire, and the Abolish Poison arms from VT.
I had aspirations for IVU clicky earring, but the competition was high, and I never found the boss up.
Hope this history helps
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