How to survive Dragon Age: Inquisition combat on Nightmare difficulty?

I tried using two mages and two warriors for my party. However I have realized that my mage character is more offensive with her spells than using supportive spells for my party. I am thinking about resetting my stats again for $400 gold, so my mage is more supportive to the party? Nightmare difficultly has proven to be very punishing for tactical failure. I want to improve my party's abilities, and tactics, but I do not know where to go for help.

How does anyone survive dragon age inquisition combat on nightmare difficulty? Is it dependent on a specific character class?

Well, I made my way to Skyhold around the 20 hour mark, and that's when combat became a hell of a lot easier. Prior to that, I had to abuse the hell out of the tactical camera on some fights. Once I got specializations unlocked though, even Nightmare was a cakewalk. My setup was as follows: Sword and Board Champion Inquisitor, 2H Cassandra, Vivienne, and Archer Cole.

By making myself the tank, I was able to have much more control over the fight than I would by just leaving an A.I. to tank. The Tactical camera is broken, so I only used it to pace fights in the start of the game. Using the tactical camera past that was just redundant, since it glitches out constantly, and won't let you move your characters where you can actually move them. I noticed more often than not, if I moved a ranged character to a vantage point, and went into tac-cam, I would be kicked off of the vantage point because the game thought I shouldn't be allowed up there.

Knight-Enchanter is incredibly overpowered. More often than not, it seemed like I was just 2 manning harder fights with my K.E. and Champion. My Guard never dropped on my Warrior, I'd seldom lose barrier on Viv, Cole usually would stay alive unless it was a dragon fight, because I'd forget to move him during the wing attack. As for Cassandra, she would full-heal the party when she died, with a 60 second cool-down. That same buff also increases the parties damage and damage resistance as well, if I remember correctly. After I equipped her with a crafted piece with the masterwork to give a 15% chance to rez to 50% upon dying, I didn't have to ever rez her with Viv, because that "15%" was 100%. Seriously. She died a good 20 times over the course of one fight, and I didn't rez her a single time with my mage.

In hindsight, I think Solas would have been a better choice than an Archer, but I hate leaving doors unlocked. With Cass in my group, not only did I manage to absolutely destroy all demons/rifts, but when my party was low on health, I could switch to her, sacrifice her to get a full heal on the party, and she'd instantly rez to 50%, I'd say that's a pretty good trade-off. A few times, my tank was the only one left standing on a dragon fight. I would pop damage invulnerability, revive vivienne, get cole and cassandra both up, sacrifice Cassy once again to heal the group and get her to 50% instead of 10% from the revive, and go from there.

Seriously.. Templar and Knight Enchanter in the same party are so broken it's not even funny. By the 30 hour/level 12 mark I was going through Nightmare like it was Casual. I'd go through an entire play session without ever touching a potion. The hardest part about Nightmare difficulty, is getting to Skyhold. After Skyhold, it's a joke if you use a Knight/Enchanter PC or Vivienne, you can solo dragons. Seriously, I've done it.

EDIT: Also, remember, it's not after level 10 that you unlock specializations like some people think, it's as soon as you hit Skyhold. I just unlocked K.E. at level 9.

I have discovered the following party build that has withstood hordes of rampaging enemies on nightmare difficulty, with no potions, and no health, that can be established at beginning levels. Yes, I said no health.

The most recent test was fighting three wisps, one pure wisp, and three bog-swamp-rhino-bore-rampaging-things, at once, on level 9. I remember Cassandra was bulldozed by those two creatures 30 feet from my party with very little health, yet we survived when I ordered my team to disengage and stand around her, provide protection while she recovered. I think that battle end inside a log cabin, with a battle time of 15 minutes?

My party is two spirit-mages and two shield-warriors with less than 100 armor rating. The shield-warriors are not two-handed warriors, but shield-and-sword warriors.

Here is my theory on why this party is so successful:

The two shield-warriors are specialized in the weapon and shield perk tree and the a little bit of perks in the guard perk tree. All of the perks in those trees help the warriors take tremendous punishment. They also randomly generate guard protection, but I am not sure where that comes from.

The two spirit-mages specialize in all of the spirit support spells, three of the biggest are barrier, dispel, and revival. Barrier protects your two warriors from all damage for a limited time. Dispel removes magical traps created by enemy mages. Revival brings your whole team back to life minus the caster.

The mutual team work occurs when the two shield-warriors taunt the enemy and draw fire from the mages. The mages provide magical defense for the two warriors, and occasionally themselves. Having two warriors doubles the defense against enemies flanking your two mages. Having two mages cuts the defensive spell cool downs in half.

I said no health required. Having two mages with barrier, one can almost spam continuous magical defense on either the two warriors or all four party members. Because the warriors also randomly generate protective guard on top of their health, this combined with the nearly continuous generation of protective barriers decreases the window of damage opportunity to once every 10 to 20 hits. Using my two warriors and two mages party, I was able to restore, dispel, and revive my party through the hairiest battles I would of thought impossible to survive when I first started playing, after I had used all of my potions and everyone's health was at their lowest.

I have also learned additional tactics with this party. The mind blast can interrupt any enemies attack. This is very useful for pausing the lesser-terror-stick-tree-like-screaming-popping-out-of-ground-creatures from stunning your team almost indefinitely. Remember, you have two spirit-mages to spam the mind blast spell. I found myself actually moving the mages closer to, but behind the warriors at all times, so they can utilize the mind blast spell. This turns into an elegant dance of the party, where the warriors attack the current highest property enemy of your choice, and the mages dance around the warriors. Any enemy that tries to target the mages, either becomes taunted by the warriors, or they are mind blasted. It helps to have at least one additional crowd control spell on the mages, such as freeze or shock, but optional. I found battle proximity for the mages is matter of preference for the player. The revival spell is the most devastating weapon in the party. Once the enemy has thrown everything at the party to near exhaustion to kill all but one of the mages, that mage will revive the whole party back, with additional protection from the upgraded revival spell. If the party dies again, you can cast revival a second time with the other mage. This party is a living nightmare for the enemy.

One issue resolved : The barrier spell is double casted automatically by both mages, which waste the opportunity to cast them in chains. I resolved this problem by making sure I was in selection of one of the two mages in the tactical view, which prevents the game from auto-casting the spell, and allowing the other mage to cast the barrier spell automatically.

Disclaimer : The full benefit of this party build requires full use of the tactical view. The smallest window between chain casting barrier with two mages was less than three seconds, but keep in mind that the barrier spell is only one out of many different defensive tools at your disposal, such as: all of the warriors crowd control attacks, the randomly generated warrior guard, the strategic positioning of your team mates to minimize damage from incoming spells and arrows (such as attacking archers first and moving the mages behind the archers), the mind blast spell, and the revival spell.

Additional Disclaimer : This party is not invincible, but it is a die hard party. Because of the 3 second window between chaining barrier spells, there is a possibility that one attack out of ten will kill one of your team mates with no health.

I challenge anyone to try my suggested party build and test if it works or not to what I have written.

What works for me is two mages, archer and shield tank. For the mages, I build them the same. Barrier, flashfire to panic, winters grasp to freeze. Anything that takes an enemy out of combat even for a few seconds, and dispel to get rid of demons when closing rifts before they even spawn.

For rogue, get sleep powder and upgrade ASAP. You can take an enemy out for 20 seconds! Just don't hit him or he wakes up. Then all archer tree. For tank, all the taunts, shield wall.

Don't ever let your mages do things on their own. Disable their abilities in tactics menu. Focus fire all members on one enemy at a time and remember to barrier your tank and always be stunning, freezing or putting things to sleep. With all that CC you shouldn't have too many issues. This is tactical cam heavy so if it's not fun for you then Nightmare is gonna give you issues. Hope this helped.