Why is dog/shale so weak?

[Question2]

-Cant use runes (huge difference in damage, two grandmaster silverite runes is +20 damage PER HIT vs one of the most common enemies in the game)

 

-No set item bonuses

 

-No stat buffs from accessories, etc

 

-Weapons/armor are MUCH weaker than what a normal character can use

 

-Talents are extremely limited and do not synergize or scale well (you get 3 trees of talents for normal characters, dog gets one, shale gets one per mode, talents in other modes dont affect the other modes)

 

At around level 10 you can pick up very powerful items like the warden commander set and starfang, whereas shale's top tier crystals only show up at around level 20. Even comparing shale/dog with their top tier equip vs other characters with early equip, other characters come out ahead.

 

Oghren with the legion of the dead and helm of honnleath and some accessories gets 34 armor. Shale in tank mode with brilliant natural crystals only get 20 armor. And this is with Oghren specced for damage with a two hander.

 

Shale's buff mode leaves her defenceless and is much weaker than Leliana with song of courage. Except that Leliana with song of courage can still attack and do insane damage with a decent bow.

 

Shale's ranged mode doesnt seem to have a basic ranged attack and her talents all have long cooldowns so im not sure how you are supposed to keep her in ranged mode and be useful.

 

And her damage mode cant match the damage output of any character with or without runes.

 

Dog's only saving grace is that overwhelm is bugged and does not check for physical resistance (why isnt there a fix for this? this is a massive bug!).

 

I just stick dog/shale in the camp because they are too weak to bring along for anything...

[Thandal]

I love both of these companions, although I agree that Dog is more limited than any other. I always use Extra Dog Slot to be able to have my mabari along without having to leave someone else behind.

 

It seems to me that you're not employing either one to the best advantage. In addition to Dog's Overwhelm (which I admit is bugged in favour of the Party!) I use Threaten+Indomitable as sustained abilities, then Howl to immobilize the group of critters drawn by the high Hostility rating. Works wonderfully to deal with all sorts of encounters.

 

As for Shale, there is a HUGE bug in the Rock Barrage talent that prevents it from working at all unless you use a mod like Dragon Age Rules Fixpack to enable it. That said, it seems to me that most people try to use Shale as a Tank, when she's really a Bunker. Stone Aura can make a decent Party almost invincible as long as the battle takes place within its range.

 

Then, as the Wiki Article notes:

 

Shale's crystals are some of the strongest single items in the game. For example, small, Clear, Spirit crystals will give Shale +15% spirit damage, +1 to each attribute, and +1 armor penetration. This is to compensate for the drawback that Shale can only equip one small crystal and one large crystal at a time.

 

Shale also can gain an Item Set Bonus of +10% resistance to certain kinds of damage by pairing large and small crystals of the appropriate matched type.

 

And on top of all that, Shale's Party Banter is some of the best in the game! :laugh:

[Shamy20]

Or you could lower the difficulty and enjoy different characters throughout your game. That's what I am planning on doing :cool: