How to counter enemy blood mage "deathcloud" ability?

I'm being seriously frustrated with fighting enemy blood mages in Dragon Age 2 (currently Huon as part of On the Loose quest):

They're casting some kind of death cloud spell, that appear as a red fog circles on the ground and stuns my party members in the area and does a lot of damage - my main char (mage) and Anders and Isabela die almost instantly from it (and die certainly in a few seconds thanks to the stun).

I already had the same problem with another fight and I somehow managed to fight through it by lowering difficulty.

So the question is: how do I avoid this ability / mitigate the damage / counter it?

I'm playing on Hard difficulty.

Solution 1:

Any enemy that is able to one-shot your party members should be incapacitated immediately, using Crushing Prison and similar abilities. Just don't let them cast the spell and kill them as fast as possible.

According to the description the spell you describe could be Hemorrhage. I don't think there are easy ways to protect yourself from that spell, blood magic deals physical damage and ignores armor (according to the description of the player blood magic abilities).

Solution 2:

If you're a Mage, use Dispel Magic. It immediately stops him from casting a spell and disables any sustained abilities he has activated. Also, it increases health recovery for any allies affected by spells "AND" if upgraded will do a large amount of Spirit damage (to enemies) on top of all that.

What's more, this spell works on any character that uses any type of sustained ability. That includes, demons, lieutenants, templars, etc. If there are enemy Mages using the Barrier spell (that isn't scripted to stay active), try casting it on the ground next to them and watch it pull them right out of their protective shell. Dispel Magic is a very underrated (if not ignored) spell if you ask me.

Solution 3:

I disabled the auto movement of my units and kept them out of the cloud until it was over, though sometimes, I needed to resurrect them. Wait until the cloud is gone, of course. Except that cloud Huon is helpless, that one strong bloodmage attack can be helped by drinking a healing pot.

I did pile him a bit and used area spells on him as well.