What do you mean panning the camera with the keyboard? I manipulate the angle using the mouse. WS just moves it up or down. It's the equivalent in DAO of using your cursor at the edge of the screen.
As opposed to with the mouse a the edges of the screen, yes. Panning may not have technically been the correct term, although I tend to think of it as WASD (or the mouse at the edge of the screen) moving the camera back and forward and right and left, whereas the right mouse button manipulates the angle, which I think of as up and down.
The tactical camera is zoomed in close enough that if I leave it at the default angle, I still have to move it back and forth using WASD to follow the entire fight, and if I angle it down to more of the action camera angle it only compounds the problem because then everything moves out of the camera's view that much faster.
I'd rather not have to move the camera around at all in the course of a fight, unless the fight actually moves to another location. Either a fixed high view or a camera like the action view will accomplish that, assuming that I can issue commands the same way with either (which is, of course, not the case in DA:I). I don't actually have much of a preference between the two views, although the higher view does give a more complete impression of the field -- I just don't want to have to be fighting the camera, which in tactical mode, I have to. I'll admit that I often seem to have issues with the cameras in games; NWN2's was actually even worse, for instance. I never had any problem with the camera in either DA:O or DA II, though.