Today I killed the Hinterlands dragon with level 14-13 group. Four mages to be more specific. With the specific build I use for each mage tank was not required.
I'm playing on Nightmare difficulty level with friendly fire ON. Not sure if I saved the video with the dragon (the fight was quite long). But I can show what 4 mages are capable of by one of my older videos:
I realized I didn't actually give any advice. So to be succinct:
Check your gear. Bring healing potions. Pause and control each party member. I, personally, like to have a rogue archer on the fringes to deal damage from afar and to revive. I'm a two hander, so having Iron Bull can be a good and bad. Good in that two massive damage dealers can wear the dragon down quicker, but, at least in my experience, we both get wiped pretty easy. (Revive Varric!)
But the real secret: Vivienne. She sucks as a person, but she can destroy a dragon with her Knight Enchanter spec. It's almost too much. Bringing Vivienne and Cassandra is half the battle. That being said, I get not wanting to feel forced into the same two companions for every dragon fight. So it just becomes trying to plan out an attack. Use the Tactical camera. Micromanage potions and companions. But you need a tank. So either Blackwall or Cassandra. Tanks with full guard are the key. Barrier is important.
Of course, unless you've googled every dragon fight, you don't always know their strengths and weakness. Which means, getting wiped and then going back and making sure you have resistant potions and armors that you've upgraded is a good thing. Sometimes, you're just going to get wiped, and that's a sign you need to rethink. I love that learning curve.
I say all this as a very mediocre combat guy. You can do it, man!
With Vivienne, I took her Barrier/Fire spec before I started in Knight Enchanter. Wall of Fire is great for the dragons in Emprise du Lion. For other dragons, when I take Dorian, I've got him specc'd all the way into his Necro tree. Walking bomb and panic are great crowd control for those fights when the dragon calls for backup. Jar of Bees works surprisingly well on those little bastard dragonlings as well.
Solas worked well on some of the dragon fights. I took him full Barrier/Lightning and shocking a pack of adds can be handy.
Once you get past Haven, do not overlook your fade ability. It can also make for great crowd control, and has the lovely side effect of stunning the dragon while it's active. I prefer to try to save the focus for it until the first time the adds show up. 
Use your dps' focus abilities. Dragons don't stand a chance against a party with max focus.
Turn it on casual, thats what i did. And i don't give a crap what anyone says, I killed a Dragon and got good loot. 
Though it still took like 15 minutes, and i only did it with the Hinterlands and Crestwood dragon, last time i tried to fight the Western Approach dragon on casual i got my ass handed to me. So i do believe some prep is required for the later Dragon encounters.
^My tempest Sera did pretty much the same thing on that guy.
i tackled my first dragon at lvl 14 i think ...
on normal mode it was pretty easy as in i basically did nothing. it was long, true ... the damn thing has a ton of life ... but i didn't need any tactics, i not once needed to control a different character ( actually though my entire playthrough on normal i never needed to pause or control other characters - the game is fairly easy ) and i barely used any spells ... just autoattacks ... was playing a mage ... and i barely used my health potions ... i think at some point cassandra used one or blackwall ...
the only thing that may prove somewhat difficult is when you're using a staff that the enemy is immune to. i have noticed that it renders your autoattacks useless if the enemy is immune to the type of staff you have.
as a strategy ... at least for normal difficulty ... get blackwall, get cassandra, bulk them up ... and get damage on your staff ( craft it - from what i've noticed drops in this game are laughable ). and you can just stampede through everything ...
it takes a long time cause they all have a lot of life but they have zero damage against cassandra and blackwall. like literally zero damage ... a lot of the times after a big fight everyone was at full life. that barrier thingie is basically god mode = on.
which ... i will admit makes me curious - does the final boss battle level up as you do ? i had finished the game at lvl 17 i think because i hardly did any kind of exploration ... i explored everything in the hinterlands but didn't have patience to do anything else once i noticed that exploration doesn't affect the main storyline ... and under those circumstances the final boss battle was still relatively easy ...
now, if one goes ahead and explores everything and lvls up i imagine the final boss battle would be laughably easy unless the end boss levels up as you do ... so does anyone know if it does ?
You don't need to outlevel the dragon, you don't need dragon slaying runes, you don't need resistance potions or specific gear, and you don't need to bring specific companions to beat dragons, at least on hard difficulty without friendly fire. All these things will make it easier, particularly if you are slow at learning the dragon's special abilities, but they are not required.
If you bring a party of four that that are of the same level as the dragon, have decent ability builds, work well together, wear sensibly crafted gear for your level based on damagedealing and survival respectively, and include a sword and board tank, the 8 healing potions should be enough to see you through the battle when combined with playing in tactical mode and frequent pausing to reposition people appropriately.
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