Boss fights are WAY overtuned
I'm playing a mage on adventurer difficulty, which is supposed to be the "balanced" difficulty. So why am I stuck constantly dodging around the entire battlefield for half an hour while my companions...
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If your first dragon fight wasnt until level 30 or 31 then you don't really even know what I am talking about. I got to corius pre lvl 20 (I am focusing on getting companions before exploring, which is the strategy bioware should expect most players to use since so many areas are locked without companion skills). I just barely reached level 20 and there's a dramatically noticeable increase in Rook's strength and survivability.
Ah, Corius, story related dragon fight. No, I went for the other one. Still, if you don't pay attention to targeting you're in for a nasty surprise. Also The dragon can be interrupted or distracted when he's about to launch an attack by beaming magic in his eyes. Doesn't do much damage but spares you of being hit 3 out of 5 cases. Since you talk about Bioware and other games you also should be aware of how the threat is working. Casting more DPS than TPS of a tank results in getting targeted by the boss. AOE damage can be mostly avoided taking that you do know how to manage the resource. Exploit: while you cast a skill you take no damage. Step fade at the last moment also avoid the damage even if you are still in area of impact (50% chance).
Anyways, if you didn't do exploration you probably didn't upgrade your gear as well (lack of materials). That fight is a good point to review the difficulty settings and serves the story purpose by showing that you're not ready to face a dragon. So if you are enraged about that fight wait to see what's coming.
Drop the difficulty or use the the custom settings to make the fights enjoyable.
As you speak about what players do, I beg to differ. Story mission is the last one I do in any RPG I play. Then again, I'm not one for the combat and still I enjoy it so much in this game.
if you didn't do exploration you probably didn't upgrade your gear as well (lack of materials).
So I do see why you'd make that assumption but I had everything equipped for me and my whole party upgraded as far as I could (capped by level, not resources).
And fair, different people play differently, so maybe by saying "most players" I was overstating it. But getting all your companions first isn't an abnormal strategy because a lot of people don't like running the same map over and over just to get the one thing they couldn't unlock the first time or few through. So if I was underleveled and undergeared for the corius fight, fine, but I got shoehorned into it and I didn't know to wait to start the quest that lead into it because there aren't any level indicators in the quest log, no warning popups that I'm underleveled, none of those other game mechanics that are commonly used now.
But even then, no one should ever describe a fight in a dragon age game as "punishing" on normal mode. Corius isn't the first boss I had to get through by running in circles while my party got to actually do the fight, but he was the most egregious. I did end up using custom settings to turn down enemy dmg, health, and aggression to the lowest setting which barely made corius survivable, and that honestly made me wonder if the enemy aggression setting is even working as intended. The frequency of attacks did not slow down one bit; I still ended up getting stunlocked a couple times and only finished the fight because the boss wasn't hitting as hard.
Tons of people are saying the combat is too hard because Rook gets hit too often and the recovery animations take too long, which leads to you getting functionally stunlocked. And recommending an exploit as a way to get around it is an indicator that something is wrong. This game does have the most fun combat in a dragon age game when it is working. But I'm sorry, people having to rely on exploits and spending 95% of a fight sprinting in a circle just to avoid a game over (again, on normal difficulty) is a sign that something isn't working the way it should be.
