The difficulty between normal and easy is crazy. Some battle I can't beat no matter what. All of my guys die in about 7 seconds. If I switch it to easy, its really really easy and I don't have to do anything. No one dies at all. What gives? Why is there a HUGE jump between easy and normal? I can't even imagine how one would beat hard or nightmare without cheating.

Also my character is a level 14 warrior, but its frustrating how she can die in seconds so late in the game. It isn't very fun to either die immediately or have no challenge. WTF?!

then stop playing vinny

Pausing helps a lot. Picking targets helps and make sure you have some form of healer. That's about all I know.

It took me 82 hours to finish (with some DLC in there) and I really enjoyed it.

Stop playing that game and then everybody wins. Or so I've been told.

You should play it on hard like a man.

@Jack_Daniels said:

                    @Daveyo520: Might have to just play on easy then. After 10 deaths in one battle I am starting rage.

               

Which battle is it?

Seriously..? You must have some terrible tactics going on if you find normal to be so frustratingly difficult. It's far too easy, imo, and Hard mode was what had the perfect balance.

What battle/part of the game are you on?

I barely paused at all on normal and I thought it was a little on the easy side. Not really sure what you're doing wrong.

Nuke the mages ASAP, mop up everybody else.  Apply to every fight in the game.

@Abyssfull: Okay I'll try to break it down. I'm a level 14 warrior, who uses dual hand weapons. I have Alistair, The Dog, and Wynne. Wynne is a healer and just heals the other three. She is set to disengage from battle and just spam heal, team heal, regeneration and the like. I pause the game and try to get the melee enemies to attack Allistair and the Dog as my character rushes the mage. Whats crazy is that I was flying through the game with this tactic. I beat the mages tower, the elves forest, and the dwarves dungeon. I'm at the last part where I go to the human settlement and I'm getting smoked trying to get through the last two rooms of the bandits hideout. But I must be using some terrible tactics eh?

Drop the dog for Morrigan, get some crowd control spells on her like Cone of Cold or Paralyze. Make Alistair a full tank, keep Shield Wall and Threaten up at all times, run in and hit Taunt, any enemies not on the tank should be CC'd. Keep Alistairs health up as high as possible with Wynne, Heroic Defense or Glyph of Warding helps too.  

At this point your other characters seriously outclass the dog.  Swap him out for a 2nd mage (assuming you haven't turned in Morrigan) and life will be much easier. 

Get some AoE spells going with your mages.
Have at least 2 mages in party
Learn and spam Cone of Cold on groups of enemies
Gear up your tank, go buy a ring that gives 13 CON (i think it's sold in dwarven city if memory serves)
EDIT: after your post with party makeup, like others have said, loose the dog

IF you want to feel like a god, start a mage, become Arcane Warrior, solo everything on Hard by rolling face on keybard.

Maybe lessen the requirements on the heals. Like change it from <25% health to <50%. And/or set up health potion use for each character to at least <25%.

Wynne will run out of mp or at least have to wait for heals to cool down. That's my best guess atm.

Protip: Make Wynne heal before, I repeat:

BEFORE!!!!!!!!

They hit 25% health. How about at 75% instead? Be warned though, it will make the game rediculously easy. I breezed through it on hard (rogue) and stopped about 1/4 into Nightmare (mage) because it was too easy. Oh, and that aoe heal aura that also cleanses? It sucks 10 mana/s but the game doesn't tell you, so you'll end up oom without knowing why. Stay away from it.

@Abyssfull: Okay I'll try to break it down. I'm a level 14 warrior, who uses dual hand weapons. I have Alistair, The Dog, and Wynne. Wynne is a healer and just heals the other three. She is set to disengage from battle and just spam heal, team heal, regeneration and the like. I pause the game and try to get the melee enemies to attack Allistair and the Dog as my character rushes the mage. Whats crazy is that I was flying through the game with this tactic. I beat the mages tower, the elves forest, and the dwarves dungeon. I'm at the last part where I go to the human settlement and I'm getting smoked trying to get through the last two rooms of the bandits hideout. But I must be using some terrible tactics eh?

You have to use tanks (Alistar or Shale) to distract your targets, then use rogues, DPS (damage dealers like Sten), and mages to dish out the damage. The difficulty, however, is getting your party to do what you fucking want them to do without automatically doing something different, and hoping that enemies don't move away from your tank because the "taunt" ability takes a millennium to recharge.

Always be running two mages.

  @Vorbis: @endaround: Okay I'm going to try this.

@Abyssfull:  DUDE if dual wielding warriors are crappy then thats hardly my fault. Why the hell are they in the game. I'm using the dragon age armor that I finally ranked up to so I do a lot of damage. My entire party gets fucked so fast its crazy.

Another tip:

Crushing Prison and Force Field are godlike.  Crushing Prison traps an enemy for about 7-10 seconds and does damage the whole duration, usually about half of the enemy's health.  Force Field traps an enemy but without the damage.  If you have Wynne and another mage with both of these, you can shut down half of the other force immediately and go for the rest while they are trapped.

  @Vorbis: @endaround: Okay I'm going to try this.

@Abyssfull:  DUDE if dual wielding warriors are crappy then thats hardly my fault. Why the hell are they in the game. I'm using the dragon age armor that I finally ranked up to so I do a lot of damage. My entire party gets fucked so fast its crazy.

@Jack_Daniels said:

@Abyssfull: Okay I'll try to break it down. I'm a level 14 warrior, who uses dual hand weapons. I have Alistair, The Dog, and Wynne. Wynne is a healer and just heals the other three. She is set to disengage from battle and just spam heal, team heal, regeneration and the like. I pause the game and try to get the melee enemies to attack Allistair and the Dog as my character rushes the mage. Whats crazy is that I was flying through the game with this tactic. I beat the mages tower, the elves forest, and the dwarves dungeon. I'm at the last part where I go to the human settlement and I'm getting smoked trying to get through the last two rooms of the bandits hideout. But I must be using some terrible tactics eh?

Do you mean Redcliffe? Or the part in Denerim where you're meant to prepare for the Landsmeet? If it's the Landsmeet then it's much more understandable since that part really does have an insane difficulty spike.  But for starters, you're a warrior who's using 2 handed weapons, and also doesn't have a Rogue? That's a mistake there as you may of missed plenty of gear, items and such if you've gone this far without a Rogue. Duel weaponed warriors are pretty worthless also, and much more suitable with the Rogues DPS with their added skills. The best kind of party would of been if you were a Rogue, and then to have Morrigan and Wynne along. Alistair can make for a great tank with the right equipment and skills, Wynne you're doing right as she's essentially a healer/buffer, and finish out the final spot with Morrigan, who you could give the Spirit Healer specialization to have two prominent healers, but also to then focus on the wide area of effect spells like inferno, cone of cold ect. But even still on normal mode you should be OK since you've at least got two tanks covering the ranks. I think it must be more down to your own reactions. Never underestimate potions, pause virtually after every action you take and administer poisons to your weapons before you enter battles. Don't forgot to have Alistair, and the dog if he has it too, with the Threaten skill activated.

@Abyssfull said:

@Jack_Daniels said:

@Abyssfull: Okay I'll try to break it down. I'm a level 14 warrior, who uses dual hand weapons. I have Alistair, The Dog, and Wynne. Wynne is a healer and just heals the other three. She is set to disengage from battle and just spam heal, team heal, regeneration and the like. I pause the game and try to get the melee enemies to attack Allistair and the Dog as my character rushes the mage. Whats crazy is that I was flying through the game with this tactic. I beat the mages tower, the elves forest, and the dwarves dungeon. I'm at the last part where I go to the human settlement and I'm getting smoked trying to get through the last two rooms of the bandits hideout. But I must be using some terrible tactics eh?

Do you mean Redcliffe? Or the part in Denerim where you're meant to prepare for the Landsmeet? If it's the Landsmeet then it's much more understandable since that part really does have an insane difficulty spike.  But for starters, you're a warrior who's using 2 handed weapons, and also doesn't have a Rogue? That's a mistake there as you may of missed plenty of gear, items and such if you've gone this far without a Rogue. Duel weaponed warriors are pretty worthless also, and much more suitable with the Rogues DPS with their added skills. The best kind of party would of been if you were a Rogue, and then to have Morrigan and Wynne along. Alistair can make for a great tank with the right equipment and skills, Wynne you're doing right as she's essentially a healer/buffer, and finish out the final spot with Morrigan, who you could give the Spirit Healer specialization to have two prominent healers, but also to then focus on the wide area of effect spells like inferno, cone of cold ect. But even still on normal mode you should be OK since you've at least got two tanks covering the ranks. I think it must be more down to your own reactions. Never underestimate potions, pause virtually after every action you take and administer poisons to your weapons before you enter battles. Don't forgot to have Alistair, and the dog if he has it too, with the Threaten skill activated.

There really is nothing wrong with DW fighters.In fact properly built, they far far out dammage 2h.Get a DW fighter Reaver and/or Berserker specialisation, make mages cast elemental weapons, toggle momentum, watch everything die.

I had similar problems playing through my first time. My party would be doing fine, then I would get ambushed and get completely dominated and not know why.
I've put in 200+ hours and recently beat DA:O on nightmare, so here's my advice:

As some have said, swap your Dog for Morrigan. Two mages makes the game a lot easier, especially the first time through.
Make sure that both of your mages have Heal (Group Heal wouldn't hurt either).
With two mages, you have access to more CC. Winter's Grasp, Crushing Prison and the entire Glyph line are all really good.

For tactics, I always set my Mages to Ranged and Melee characters to Aggressive.
Set up your tactics to utilize focus fire and always target enemy mages first.

If you're playing on the PC, and want to mess around with different abilities/specs, you can always use this respec mod: http://social.bioware.com/project/469

@Abyssfull: In terms of raw dammage output they are comparable, due to buffs from reaver/zerker plus the fact that warrior can dump into STR after getting enough DEX for talents, whereas rogue needs to decide if he will plit into CUN , but STR is still needed for armours,
2h warrior will also be more survivable then a rogue, but the rogue will obviously have more utilty.main dammage does not even come from their respective talents, it's  momentum/haste + weapon enchants + elemental enchants that are doing most of the hard liftingin Awakening DW warrior straight up overtakes DW rogue due to Spirit warriorto call DW warrior useless is just plain wrong

I'm also 30 hours in and i'm super frustrated also, but for a different reason.... I really like the story of this game so far but it seems very tedious, everyone essentially says "Clear out this dungeon and we will help in the fight."

I completely agree.  The game can be stupid hard in certain encounters on normal (not even boss encounters, random map encounters for no good Goddamn reason) but then on easy there's barely a point to any of it.  It's just pressing up and A until the next cut scene.

Considering the quality of the writing though, maybe that's not a bad choice.

@zityz: I pause all the time and I totally have a healer. She is maxed out on her healing spells but it doesn't seem to matter at all. I pick my targets, but when their mage uses fireball it literally takes off 1/3 of everyone's health. I've been using some cheap tactics for a bit, trying to draw them out a few at a time. Still, I kind of loved Oblivion because I felt like a fucking god at the end of the game. I was so powerful I could literally stand there and soak up damage it was awesome! Here, I'm a weak baby kitten who put on mittens as armor.

@NickL: Dragon Age 1 is about 5 or 6 long ass dungeons, and the Deep Roads which is some kind of marathon dungeon.  Dragon Age 2 is more like 30-40 minidungeons that you finish in about 15 minutes per quest, the problem is they just use the same 5-6 areas and close off different paths to try to make it seem varied.  Oh... and it also has a Deep Roads section, which also kind of sucks.

Stun the mage

Stop playing that game and then everybody wins. Or so I've been told.