Dragon Age II High Dragon (spoiler free)

So ive been playing through Dragon Age two for almost a week now, and Ive gotten to the part near the end where you can fight the High Dragon but the problem is that he is kicking my butt every time I face him. Ive got a lvl 15 mage right now and both his rings and amulet have +100 something fire resistance. Ive only been able to get him down to about half heath before either him or his little dragon friends take both me and my partners out.

So does anyone have any good tips to taking out this beast?

Make a ton of potions to heal yourself. There are two different ones if I remember correctly. Also, see about you and your companions equipment. Upgrade whatever you can, add runes where you can. Upgrade your weapons, etc. I had a tough time and then I levelled up a bit more and equipped some badass armor and took him down like he was nothing. Check the Emporium, if your stats aren't high enough for better gear you can buy the potions that reset you to level 1 with all of your unlocked points available.

Try to make sure all your party members have frost runes in their weapons, and fire resistance runes in their armor wherever possible, It helps alot.

Try to make sure your mage casts frost spells. They take the dragon down quicker. Also your mage should know the heal spell.

And like mentioned above have lots of potions, especially the one where you can bring back players from the dead (Mythal's Favor).

Get around 10-20 potions. Put Fire Ward runes on everyone's armor. Have Aveline tank, a healer (if you can heal then never mind the healer) you and Isabela. If either you or the healer have haste then cast it, switch to Isabela and just attack using X, nothing else. Sooner or later Isabela will get aggro, run around the dragon (using Isabela still) while others attack the dragon. When adds come again, use Isabela's auto attack to kill small ones with 2 hits each, let Aveline get the big ones. Rense and repeat.

If you still can't kill it then my advice is to get more potions, try to finish other quests and get your level higher, get better items and keep trying. Fire Ward runes are VERY helpful. If you don't have Isabela then the same strategy can be used with Fenris or Varric.

Lemme know if you have any other problems.

One thing you should know is that you can go level up and return to do this quest later as long as u dont do the final quest of the act you are in. So if u are really having a hard time come back later. As everyone said make sure u have fire runes on everyones armor, lots of potions and you should be fine. I had a party of Aveline(tank), Sebastian(ranged DPS) and Anders(healer) as my Hawke was a rogue. You said you were a mage so besides Aveline you should bring an all ranged party, because u will have to babysit Isabella or Fenris as the dragons attack are really powerful and I had a hard time trying to keep my Hawke alive. Also bring that flask that can revive party members just in case your healer cant revive, you dont want to get close to beating him then wiping because you lost your healer.