Enemy aggro makes game really unreasonable as a mage

I think 4 games in, it's reasonable to expect the absolute basics of combat and gameplay loop to be somewhat consistent. 

And a consistent pillar of Dragon Age so far has been the ability to have different party composition and build choices based on your gameplay preference. If you didn't want to be melee, you didn't have to be: every game has had warrior tanks to draw aggro and let the PC hang back to focus on ranged attacks. 

As a mage, I spend 70% of my time running in circles, dodging, and generally kiting enemies with very little time to actually use my abilities. I have to rely entirely on 1 ability for 1 companion to make enemies behave in any kind of reasonable way, and the game is **bleep** tedious without constantly spamming taunt. 

Why? Why give us 3 games with a consistent philosophy around aggro, enemy behavior, and party/build choice just to abruptly make a hard turn into forcing everybody to invest heavily in defense and melee strength regardless of what we want? What's the POINT of letting us be archers or staff users if we can't actually stay at range for any period of time at all? 

I really hope this gets fixed or patched somehow. Not everyone wants to be a heavy armor melee fighter.