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Rightmost tab ("Behaviors") has presets I don't much care for. I set "Mana Reserve" at zero and set them to "Follow" themselves, or--if I'm a rangestriker--I set the other rangestrikers to follow me, since I'm smart enough to step out of the line of fire (usually
On occasion I set Solas--whom I reconfigure as a Spirit mage, seems appropriate somehow <g>--to "Protect" my tank--which seems like it would be the thing to do here.
There's also a tab where you can set each power to "Use" (the default), "Don't Use" (self-explanatory) or "Preferred." I usually pick some offensive power I'd like to see in action and set that one (only) to "Preferred." For example, I often set up Dorian as a Lightning mage, so since I like Lightning Cage as an AoE I set that one to "Preferred."
If I'm fighting some large, boss-like enemy--like a dragon--and my warrior has the Grappling Chain power I set it to "Don't Use" since it's only effective against material ("Cass! how many times do I have to say it? It doesn't work against Wisps !!!"
As for my setup, I am playing an artificer rogue archer level 16 currently with most of my damage coming from grapple hook + shotgun to the face combo, I have disabled AI tactics on myself because in my experience not having it be so ends up with me always ending up in the melee as game does not seem to understand the concept of a twig of wood with some strings attached to it. I run therefore a group of 2 mages, 1 warrior tank & me. Solas is ice - nature mage focused on buffing and dealing damage through ice magic, I prioritize barrier, and things that don't go on long cooldown because I know they suck at placing aoes. Dorian is fire - lightning, lightning I only place manually and let him do fire stuff himself. Cassandra is straight up tank.
As for behaviors, I set 1 hp flask reserve on tank, 2 flasks reserve on everyone else, running 12 flasks + 5 regen pots each. 10% mana reserve for everyone. I did not try setting them to follow themselves, I tried many things though, I tried setting them to defend themselves, which resulted in mages just not participating in combat unless I specifically tell them to, and if I tell them to, they walk into the dragon's butt the moment it turns around as they tunnel vision on a specific limb I originally sent them after. Cassandra is generally okay except she loves just standing in crap.
Here's where the issue comes in. Entire difficulty of every dragon encounter so far has proven to be one specific sustained aoe condition. Hinterlands dragon set grass on fire, Exalted lands dragon shocks the water. And here's where my nerves breached their limits as I carefully walk everyone out of the bad zone, only to see them rush into it immediately after because the dragon in meantime decided to turn around and the limb they decided to go after is no longer in range.
At this point I'm even considering an immortal companions mod just to finish the game once for the story, I play on Hard difficulty but difficulty is not the issue here. The mechanics are easy, but I feel like the companion AI is actively sabotaging me. I never experienced such frustration in DAO or DA2.
I'll try the "follow self" and changing their behaviors for different fights and hope the other 8 dragons are fine, I also worry the dragons might scale poorly with Even Grounds which I enabled as I am a completionist and therefore would otherwise fight them about 3-5 levels above.
Anyway, will give it a few more tries but I am really close to giving up on the game, frustration of its gameplay is starting to beat out the good vibes I get from some companions and the story. :(
All of my difficulties typically come in fights where I'm being swarmed. In fact I notice that in many fights, the enemy stupidly set themselves up in tiny groups and you can defeat them in detail, as for example in the crypts below Mythal's temple.
When you're being mobbed, your party often get confused and outflanked, so you wind up having to do a lot of the heavy lifting. But when it's just one adversary they're generally able to stay Oscar Mike.
But the dragon fights...most of them follow a recognizable pattern: initial engagement; at some point Mr. Dragger flies away and tries to bombard you with his breath weapon from afar, which you can easily evade either using cover or just strafing; during this time you can also chug a Regen potion to heal up from the previous phase and get ready for the next one.
Then it's on to the next phase, which is generally similar. The only difference is that some of the dragons summon minions, while some of them get sheathed in Guard. Wash, rinse, repeat until dragger-boy is reduced to his charred skull.
To put this in perspective...the dragon-fight in the big throwdown against Cory always seems to me the easiest part of the fight, since his behavior is almost entirely predictable and he never goes very far. The worst part is the vortex and I deal with that by running toward him as soon as he starts beating his wings. But at least the dragon isn't using that verdammt red lyrium death-ray!
And lest you wonder, I'm on Nightmare with Even Ground, though since I also generally use either Take It Slow or a mod that reduces my XP even further--I'm currently on a 70 percent reduction mod, so I'm earning 30 percent of normal XP--Even Ground is mostly irrelevant.
Getting back to practicalities...try the "Follow Self" approach and see if it doesn't make a difference. Insofar as I can determine, that's the only major difference between us, so I'm hopeful it will prove to be the "magic bullet" for you...
-come to fight them at their level
-research their damage source, and bring resistance flasks to such damage, for whole party
-use tactical pause often and move allies out of dragon's AoE attacks
-gather 3 charges of Ultimate ability before fighting any dragon - it removes at least 40% hp
On a side note - research party AI build compositions on Youtube - there are tons of guides on how to make self-sufficient Dragon Age Inquisition party AI.
You can google "How to build a self-sufficient AI team" and video will pop up. In recommended there will be other videos with other builds from other authors.
DAI artificial intelligence is pretty decent, and you can totally make party that will survive and kill most Nightmare enemies just by themselves. Will require some crafting masterwork farming tho.
There's a guy who also does videos on solo builds. I forget his name, it's a Hungarian name, something with "Kis Herceg" in it IIRC. He's got solo builds that take down dragons in seconds!
Concur with this assessment, both parts.
The Hinterlands dragon I actually did not struggle that much with compared to the lightning dragon in Exalted Lands (Ghilan'nain's grove), while I did go fight it underleveled (lv10), it took about 9 tries in total, which is fine except the annoying run toward him. Strat for that one was quite simple, dps it down, he doesn't create many danger zones so just pump as much damage as you can, when it flies away, you can memorize which rocks he sits at and just sit under them so he can't read you, put blizzard under him while he's up there for massive passive damage, hold position on everyone. For dragonlings, what worked best for me was to have everyone focus the dragon while I was on cleanup duty, as they were low hp and assorting entire party to wipe them felt like a waste, especially as sending them onto the dragon itself moved us into next phase, which made the dragon fk off and let us deal with the dragonlings before final engagement.
Final engagement itself was same as start, so just finish it, easy peasy.
Now the lightning dragon was when I spent 3 hours on a boss trying to figure out one thing: How to prevent Solas and Dorian from doing 2 idiotic things: Stand in water, and walk into melee. It did not help that this dragon was the most erratic ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ I encountered so far, because despite Cassandra was taunting it a lot, it would casually swap to a random mage and yeet a lightning ball at them, and unfortunately AI proved to not have common sense to move out of AOE that's literally on top of them and that you can avoid if you see it coming by just side-running and jumping. Yes I can micro them into that, but here's where the issue comes:
The dragon would very often just decide to spam that, do it about 6-8 times (cassandra just nibbling his toes meanwhile trying to get his attention), then it does the lightning breath which rewards you for either standing behind it or keeping your distance, but shocks the water turning it into almost instant death zone, and then follows it up with the wind vortex immediately after, which drags the mages toward him through the water, generally they stand at maximum distance due to the breath before, so the pull itself takes about 60-80% off their hp, and the water does the rest. So now I have 2 dead mages. At this point the dragon pisses me off by proving the only intelligent AI on the battlefield, for what it does next is simply genius in its position. I go into stealth to revive Solas who has the revive spell. And every single time, without fail, the dragon would at the very last second, as I am about to finish the revive, spit the lightning ball at his corpse. So the moment he gets up, he's dead, and I take some damage AND can't revive him now.
I know a lot of this is skill issue for not micromanaging every little step of thë companions, but I just don't understand why they can't have at least basic common sense to NOT STAND in the thing reducing their HP from 100% to 0% in 4 seconds. I end up not doing any damage myself, because I have to babysit them all the time, which with a dragon having about 100k hp and me dealing about 55% of team damage generally, is a bit of an issue.
As for other fights, I'm actually remarkably fine so far, I'm only in act 2, didn't fight anything crazy yet, only annoying bit was the final fight in Act 1 against the behemoth, not because of the behemoth but because I did not know at the time why my mages were bugged out and wouldn't use abilities. In sidequests, only time I have some issue in group fights is if Revenant AND boss tier Arcane Horror are present at once, because I try to kill the arcane horror and Revenant likes to pull me directly into danger. But outside that I have very consistent bursty damage output as an artificer rogue, so only time I actually struggle is fighting something big where micromanaging companions a lot is necessary.
Important thing to mention though definitely is I do NOT play Nightmare or any special trials, only Hard with Even Ground.
I would come to fight them at their level but unfortunately I am a completionist, which means I explore about 80% of the map, and then I actually see the dragon, by which point I am about 4-5 levels beyond what it is meant to be fought at, I understand Even Ground should solve this issue, but it probably doesn't do the best job because that would suggest you need to upgrade gear every level, and as far as I know, tiers are every 3 levels, not to mention some tier is only accessible after much higher level quests which at my pace I am going to reach at about level 25-30.
I do not have the resistance flasks, I'll try looking into it some more.
I use tactical pause a lot but unfortunately I find the controls of the game remarkably clunky compared to DAO & DA2, especially the tactical camera, and I never get comfortable with they keybinds no matter how I set them up. Plus on top of that, game is very determined in constantly resetting my cycle target keybind on every game restart to TAB which serves just to annoy me as I use TAB for tactical pause because I played Veilguard.
I do not have 3 charges of ultimate yet, I only have 1, will try to commit some inq points toward it in the future.
Thing with googling compositions is I hoped to play through each DA game once without guides and optimizing the hell out of the games, as they are mostly known for their story and companions, but with DAI that is proving impossible unfortunately, I could get through DAO & DA2 & Veilguard just fine playing any way I liked, but Inquisition has been incredibly frustrating when it comes to combat, especially bosses.
What annoys me the most is I actually like the boss design with most of them, especially the dragons I think are designed the best of all DA games, I just feel the AI of companions works actively against me on those fights and therefore gameplay cannot match the boss design.
Also on a side note, I did kill the lightning dragon eventually, and I noticed at one point we managed to stagger it, making it fall to the ground and take extra damage, like in Veilguard when it gets staggered, is there a way to do this consistently? As I have absolutely no idea what caused this..
Regarding your comments directed to me:
Your tactics for the Fereldan/Hinterlands dragon seem impeccable, they almost exactly mirror what I do.
As to the Lightning dragons, they are undoubtedly the toughest. In addition to their breath weapon and the regenerating Guard, they have an AoE that puts lightning around anyone in the AoE and can't be avoided once it's on: you just have to wait it out. The game does signal you what its footprint will be so in some instances at least you can evade it. But it may not simply be the water that's at issue here, is all I'm saying: in fact the water may obscure the AoE's footprint.
One thing I haven't asked: do you use Regen potions? And are you aware you can upgrade them so that they have an AoE that stacks? If you do that and just pound a Regen potion for each of your guys during each phase fo the combat--you have five per player, so you should be able to get to the endgame before you run out--and you keep your guys grouped so the regen AoEs ovelap, they're now regenning at 4X the max regen rate? That's a LOT! :-)
The Behemoth is tough but he's somewhat fragile and he can only melee you, so just keep out of his way.
I agree that Revenants and Arcane Horrors are among the toughest enemies, they punch way above their weight. Arcane Horrors are very fragile and the best tactics I've found is to have a Cold mage freeze 'em and then pour it on with everyone else: if you have a warrior with Charging Bull, now's the time to use it. And a stabby rogue with the passive that reduces your threat can deal a ton of damage unnoticed just by attacking the guy from behind.
Revenants...they're another story. You just need to hope your tank can withstand the hits while your rangestrikers pour it on. Also, since they only appear (IIRC) at a couple of Fade Rifts and only in the second wave, you can Dispel them out of existence before they materialize. It's a bit of a crapshoot since they don't always spawn in the same spot, but just keep at it and eventually it will work. I had a LOT of trouble with the Tier 3 rift in the Fallow Mire, but if you bring two mages with Dispel, you can often end the battle before any of the second wave spawn, so without even firing a shot.
BTW...you'e aware, I assume, that you can effectively pause the game mid-combat using the eye-in-the-sky and issue specific orders to each party member that will then execute simultaneously and independently after you exit the camera, right? Because it occurs to me that if you are doing all this micromanagement on the fly, it's no wonder you're having trouble! :-)
Now, onto comments you addressed to @Deo:
I don't upgrade my gear all that often, the more so that I deliberately don't buy any schematics and rely exclusively on drops (exception: I do buy the Bianca upgrades both in Haven [Tier 1] and Skyhold [Tier 2]). But the tiers are to some degree arbitrary as far as the base gear goes: the main distinction is the number of auxiliary slots you get. That's not nothing, but the differences in DPS or Armor Prot between the best Tier N and the worst Tier N+1 aren't that large.
All four recipes for the elemental protection potions (elixirs) become available after you move to Skyhold. There's a merchant in Val Royeaux in the same storefront as the guy who sells Tier 2 schematics who sells them. But except for the one against cold, I almost never use them, and when I do, it's in the Frostback Basin where the Avvar have a devastating cold attack ("Hakkon's Breath"). As mentioned above, I lean heavily into Regen, and I don't like to spend a Perk Point just for the third potion slot when I almost never need it.
As to the Focus levels...I never upgrade them for the same reasons--I have better places to spend those Perk Points--and honestly, I never use Focus powers anyhow. So while @Deo's advice is entirely correct, I don't find it's needed. No disparagement meant, just sayin' as the phrase goes.
Hope at least some of this helps.
At level 19, Vinsomer is no easy adversary. How did you fare against the Northern Hunter (L13, Crestwood) and the Gamordan Stormrider (L15, Exalted Plains)?
As for Vinsomer, I killed her in about 11 tries, what helped A LOT was to disable casting barrier on Solas, keeping all dps (we are all ranged) grouped up, and whenever I saw the Vinsomer either scream signifying we're getting the group hug aoe, I'd pop a barrier on all 3 of us so we can tank the initial hit, and then immediately dispelled it. Generally Vinsomer follows that up with "GET OVER HERE" vortex, so the leftover barrier is very useful too.
Key advice I can give to anyone running same comp as I do (3 ranged, 1 tank) is have your tank stand slightly to the side but between you and the dragon, keep all your ranged in one spot only with small gap, in a row, not a column, towards the dragon. This way you can easily dispel all 3 at once, easily barrier all 3 at once, AND most importantly, if some ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ happens and some of you end up dying (usually not Solas because he gets his get out of jail free card at critical hp - if he's your healer) you are all in one spot, so one revive will get you all back in fight.
What also helped a ton was to find out my usual strategy of dive in, shotgun, dive in, shotgun, very much did not work on the dragons that well for some reason, and I did so much better just spamming explosive shot and long shot back to back, as a bonus I'd end up often staggering the dragon. It also nukes its guard should it want some.
The dragon fights are still far from easy and I wouldn't call them enjoyable experience for me, but they are a lot less frustrating once you figure out what works for your comp.
Also, have runes in your weapons at this level. I did not, I had no idea how much damage i was losing out.
Good tactics all, and an illustration of why when people say, "Oh, DAI's combat is stupid," I just shrug and think, wait'll you actually face a serious adversary or two.
I mean...sure...most encounters you can just bulldog your way through. But Dragons? The final bosses (Nightmare in the Fade, Samson, Cory, ...) ? Not so much.
BTW: I'm currently playing as a mage and both Solas and I are pure Spirit mages. It's of course better for him because his specialization comes with two heavy-duty Spirit attacks, but it also means 2x Barrier, 2x Dispel, and of course 2x Protective Spirit or whatever it's called. Also, Mind Blast with the "improved attacks and extra barrier" upgrade is...nice.
I went down to the cave at the far end of Hafter's Woods as a level 7 and we dropped the rift's entire second wave without firing a shot. Of course surviving the FIRST wave was pretty tough! :-) But if I'd thought to use my Focus power...oh well! :-)
Then I did the same with the rift in the Mire in the stone circle. Fun stuff...Dispel is a vastly underrated skill IMHO. Of course it doesn't help much with the dragons.
Then again, no idea what it's like on Nightmare.