Shale - what kind of damage is best ?
 

I've just recently started using Shale, and was wondering which crystals to equip him with. Any tips on which type of damage is best to use in which situation - nature, spirit, cold, electicity, fire, etc.?

I just equip him with whatever I have with the best stats. Right now it's nature. Obviously, if you know you'll be going against undead, don't use cold, etc.

I gave him fire crystals because I already have an air, earth and water mage.

Originally I gave him any best quality crystal I had for attack and an electricity resistance crystal to better protect him against my spells so I didn't have to care too much about positioning when I used those area spells. However, I read somewhere that he gets a bonus when using same-color crystals (whatever that bonus is, the game can be annoyingly uninformative in this regard), so I switched to two fire crystals for reasons outlined above.

I don't think it matters much which ones you choose, with only a few exceptions as mentioned by wolfing. Given my other reasoning though, I'd give him frost crystals if Morrigan is freezing everything all the time, fire crystals if your mage is into pyromania, and so on. Friendly fire is his main source of incoming magic damage, at least with my play style. Some creatures are very resistant against certain types of magic, so you might want to switch out the crystals temporarily, but it has never really been a problem for me (playing on normal) and I never conducted any extensive tests. I'd be interested in such results though … ;)

I haven't used him much, because he doesn't have any talents/skills but I'm doing it like Arhu. I equip his armor crystal to resist frost because my main is frost focused and I don't avoid Shale or Allister with spells. I just give them as much frost resist as possible and hope that they make their save against my magic. I have no problems freezing undead by the way. I may not damage them, but a stone fist or crit kills them and spells fire fast in this game. The blizzard spell followed with quick crits from stone fist, melee, etc will wipe the ground with all white and yellow creatures. Orange and red almost always resist the shatter effect, but it still freezes them temporarily; enough time for Allister and Leliana to quaff potions and re-poison their weapons.

It is a great idea for every melee fighter to take one level of poisoning so they can use the poisons that the main poisoner makes. This will greatly increase their melee effectiveness. I also always keep flame blade and frost blade active so that a typical hit does 4 types of damage (frost, flame, poison, and physical). It really adds up!

Thanks for the tips and ideas, guys. I had also originally protected my people against Morrigan's frost, but I also try to position them out of harm's way. This seems to be a bit harder with Wynne's newly aquired fireball spell. LOL

Good to know about the bonus with using same kind of crystals, sounds a bit like the-armour-of-the-same-kind bonus.
Heck, I wonder how I'm going to protect against the acid (nature damage, eh? ) of Morrigan's newly acquired walking bomb spell… :evilgrin:

At the end, you can buy some amazing crystals for him (requires 38 str/38 con) from a vendor in Orzammar. I tend to stick with Lightning, Nature or Spirit (Lightning mostly), as there are too many creatures that are resistant or immune to Frost/Fire (undead are resistant to Frost, demons tend to be resistant to Fire).

Does anybody know if Darkspawn are resistant against any type of damage?

Darkspawn seem to be resistant to Natural and Physical. Lightning seems to do the most consistently, damage-wise. Revenants seem to take good damage from Stone Fist, which I learned kinda late. You fight a super-Revenant in Denerim and Stone Fist seemed to hurt it more than fire/lightning/arcane bolt/and frost. Lightning was second. Regular frost he totally ignored and CoC would freeze him very briefly. I've got to stop Shale for using Killing Blow so much. He likes to blow all of his stamina in one punch, and that's fine if there's only one creature on the field. Otherwise, Shale is almost useless for the bigger part of battles. I'll have to tweak that tactic.

Ah, thanks for the tips. No, I control all my people manually, so I adapt to the situation, and find Shale exceedingly useful. :D

Btw, my dual-wieder does major damage to revenants, I've found.

Physical with cold iron runes is really the best damage to revenants. I totally agree with the dual-wielding idea. If I equip Leliana with two daggers with a couple of cold iron runes, she can solo a Revenant easily. She'll need a couple healers or a lot of potions, but she doesn't need damage help. If you cast Heroic Defense on her, I wonder if she'd even get hurt much….

Or you could simply cast Vulnerability Hex on them. Works against pretty much anything, and leads to massive damage. :)

My battles with revenants have become rather trivial once I figured out something that works, including that one in (I assume there's only one) Denerim.

Crushing prison, cone of cold, stone fist, repeat with my PC and Wynne with heals on Alistair while he tanks with not so powerful weapons/armor. Leilani shoots from the back.

I used spirit crystals because it seems like resistance to spirit damage amongst creatures is pretty rare.

Hmm, yes I wonder, what does resist spirit damage?

Not entirely sure, but arcane horrors may.

I was lucky enough find Spirits as the best crystals so far. :)

However, I hardly use Shale…. It's been Alistair for me as my tank. Maybe when I'm done with the Mage's Circle and Redclifffe I'll switch, but it's hard to improve over the blood dragon and warden armor.

I love Shale's special abilities, and she really seems much less likely to be stunned and overpowered than Alistair tends to be. She just seems sturdier altogether, and now that I have the "brilliant" line of crystals, does more damage too.

She doubles (triples, actually) as a tank and a crowd controller and does her fair share of damage too. Sassy mouth on her too… :D

Shale seems to be immune to any kind of overwhelm/grip/bite attacks, such as Ogres picking people up, Wolves' overwhelming attack or Dragons biting someone. This alone is a huge bonus.

I wonder among Blood Dragon, Warden and Juggernaut armors, which one are better?. My Arcane Warrior is wearing the Juggernaut armor now - its providing magic resistant benefits. After combine it with other item (ring, pendant, etc) my character received:

+ 1 armor
+ 20 Neutral resistant
+ 25 Fire resistant
+ 25 cold resistant
+ 35 electric resistant
+35 Nature resistant
+45 spirit resistant
+10 physical resistant

I don't like the juggernaut armour because it doesn't have an armour set fatigue bonus, and in my case, causes more fatigue than I am comfortable with, so I prefer the blood dragon armor. The warden's armour is so-so and also causes a lot of fatigue.

Wade's dragonbone/dragonscale/dragonskin armour is also rather nice armour, espcially if you need fire protection, and the medium and heavy are VERY light on fatigue.