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Origins | Ostagar | Lothering | Circle Tower | Warden's Keep (DLC) | Return to Ostagar (DLC) | Stone Prisoner (DLC) | Brecilian Forest | Redcliffe | The Urn of Sacred Ashes | Orzammar | Deep Roads | Denerim | Final Onslaught |
Aldarion | Alistair | Leliana | Mabari War Hound | Morrigan | Oghren | Shale | Sten | Wynne | Zevran | |
SHALE
Strength 22 Dexterity 21 Willpower 14 Magic 10 Cunning 10 Constitution 32
Talent Selection
Starting Talents at 10th level
I think it is easier to give advice on Shale by not giving a level by level breakdown, but rather an explanation of the fundamentals of how Shale works (and since Shale should be able to acquire all available talents anyway).
Shale has access to four unique talent trees, the Pulverizing Blows tree, the Stoneheart tree, the Rock Mastery tree, and the Stone Aura tree. The first talent in any of the trees is a sustained talent. The Stone Aura tree has all passive talents as its second, third, and fourth talents. The other trees have activated talents as their second, third, and fourth talents. When you select one of the four sustained talents, Shale can only use the activated (or passive) talents from the same tree as the sustained talent. This means that Shale has four different modes or styles of play.
Pulverizing Blows: This mode embodies the maxim, 'the best defense is a good offense'. She'll get +11 to damage, +3 to armor, and -10 to defense. I might be willing to treat this as Shale pretending to be a two-handed warrior. But the fact remains that the activated talents here are so sucky that the -10 penalty to defense becomes even harder to swallow. Slam takes too long to connect. Quake will inflict friendly fire damage on party members. This means Shale has to put her neck out well ahead of the party to make effective use of it. And even if she does, the penalty to defense means the monsters will chop her down before her comrades can bring in the cavalry. Killing Blow drains all of her stamina, making this a highly committal move. Not my preferred mode for Shale.
Stone Aura: This mode allows Shale to confer some pretty nice buffs on her comrades, but also makes her extremely vulnerable. The +12 bonus to armor does not make up for the whopping -50 penalty to defense. I rarely if ever use this mode. Leliana at least rarely takes a scratch when using Captivating Song.
Rock Mastery: This mod emphasizes attack at a distance. The key benefit is that any archers in the party will gain a +10% chance for ranged criticals, and reduced firing time. This could definitely work well if Leliana is in the party. My problem with this is that the activated talents require Shale to get closer to the enemies, so much so that the enemies will close in rather more quickly than I would like in an archery or spell themed battle. I might keep this active if my strategy for a given fight is to have an archer with a powerful bow snipe at a long distance. But that's about it.
Stoneheart: The only mode that I seriously consider as having value on an ongoing basis. Shale gets hefty bonuses to armor, health regeneration, and stamina regeneration. This also complements the activated talents that allow Shale to exercise crowd-control and to draw 'aggro' upon herself from other monsters. I develop this tree first. Everything else is mere filler as far as I'm concerned.
Script
Self: Any - Activate Precise Striking
Self: Any - Stoneheart
Self Surrounded by at least 4 Enemies - Regenerating Burst
Self Surrounded by at least 3 Enemies - Bellow
Enemy Elite or Higher - Stone Roar
Nearest Visible Enemy - Attack
Shale always keeps Precise Striking and Stoneheart active to maximize her attack bonus. She'll activate crowd-control talents when she's surrounded. She'll also 'aggro' a particularly powerful enemy when it shows itself. Shale can get a decent defense rating with the right crystal, and in conjunction with other party members' abilities like Rally and Miasma. Even if her defense rating isn't the highest imaginable, it is also compensated for by the armor and regeneration bonuses provided by the Stoneheart mode.
Inventory
Large Brilliant Ice Crystal
Small Brilliant Lightning Crystal
These two crystals best complement the Stoneheart mode in my opinion. The Ice crystal provides a hefty +15 bonus to defense, and a bonus to health regeneration that will stack with the +12 health regeneration provided by the Stoneheart mode. The lightning crystal provides bonuses to both attack and dexterity (and thus defense as well).
Attribute Increases
The first priorities are 38 Strength so she can wear a small brilliant crystal, and 38 Constitution so she can wear a large brilliant crystal. After that I pump up Dexterity, which amounts to a decision to use her as a tank. It is, at least to some degree, justified by wearing the Large Brilliant Ice Crystal. However ...
A Different Vision for Shale
Paracelsi has a different perspective on Shale. Here's an extended direct quote: "Item-wise, there is no one perfect item setup for Shale. Ideally you should be changing item setups depending on the type of enemies you intend to fight - against undead, for example, equipping small crystals with the fire element for offense will significantly increase Shale's damage output (almost all undead and darkspawn take %bonus damage from fire). If you specifically intended to fight an undead horde of mindless zombies, then you'll also want to equip large ice/electric crystals for defense which would give you extra defense/dodge/health regen. Against an undead horde of spellcasters a large spirit crystal for defense would be more appropriate for the spell/spirit resistance, and so on."
"Takes work and planning, yeah. For the record only Abominations and the Archdemon have lightning resistance, so great advice on using a small lightning crystal - it works on pretty much everything else. When Shale's damage is converted to an element type it ignores armor. High end small crystals also grant her a free +30% damage."
"You'll want to tailor her stat distribution to the role you expect her to fill. While it's possible to make her something of a jack-of-all-trades, I wouldn't recommend it. Dropping most of her points into str seems to work for me because Shale is ultimately an inferior tank - she simply lacks too many of the +defense talents other warriors have. She does get a hefty amount of dodge/missile avoidance from large lightning crystals, so she can be a decent tank when required but her real strengths lie in her buffs (most are unique to her) and damage abilities (affected by str, and gain massive bonuses from small crystals)."
*Note* Just to clarify, I contemplated the concept that Paracelsi describes before I ever wrote this guide. My viewpoint (and I admit that it is my particular viewpoint) is that emphasizing Strength and damage dealing would have been my choice as well if any of the crystals provided significant bonuses to both armor and health regeneration. If there were such crystals, Shale's resiliency would have depended on damage reduction and passively recouping health, and not at all dependent on increasing her defense rating. The problem was I don't think any of the available crystals provide good enough armor and health regeneration bonuses to justify it. The ones that come closest are the Large and Small Brilliant Natural Crystals, but the bonuses they provide are too meager in my honest opinion. Nonetheless, Paracelsi does provide some valuable insights for those of you wanting to include Shale as a core party member.
