Just to clarify, I mean Iron Bull the way it's (apparently) meant to be played: two-handed, with battlemaster skill tree. In nightmare he just dies way too fast, before he can do anything remotely useful.
Did anyone find a way of making him useful without micro-managing him?
Yea no, reaver is a spec with which AI will shoot itself in the foot with. So iron bull cannot work as a proper reaver.
Yeah, forget reaver, AI can't handle it. Spec him out two handed but give him Battle master or Vangard, not reaver.
I didn't on my Champion, but on my DW Assassin on Nightmare I use him as a two handed reaver tank, He's dipped pretty deep in vanguard, reaver, and about half the Two Hander Tree. I run with him and two ranged DPS, running as an assassin, Bull just needs to tank things for a few seconds for me to stab them all to death. He still does good damage, it's pretty fun and fast.
Thats cause you are a DW assassin, hell even on mine i kill so fast that all i need is a couple of seconds of distraction and everything is dead. So not really a fair comparison are you are using bull as bait NOT a tank.
Thats cause you are a DW assassin, hell even on mine i kill so fast that all i need is a couple of seconds of distraction and everything is dead. So not really a fair comparison are you are using bull as bait NOT a tank.
He tanks fairly well against pure melee enemies, with sufficient stamina/stamina regen the AI is really good at using block and slash when it is set to preferred.
Even still, as bait/aggro magnet, I did make him usefull on Nightmare while still preserving his 2H Reaver nature. Just set block and slash, improved warcry, and devour to preferred.
In my latest playthrough, I am a mage and didnt use him in previous runs, want to take him along for banter, so I made him into a sword and shield tank. not bad, pretty good tank. Bull probably hated me for it 
Giving the ai melee dps is equivalent to giving a 10 year old a semi automatic rifle. It could turn out well sometimes, but more than likely they're just going to shoot themselves in the foot.
He will suck with your pre-requisites.
Why is he intended to have battlemaster? He sucks with battlemaster. Nothing says he needs battlemaster.
Get Block and slash, challenge, and bullrush. Now he has tons of guard and he can deflect enemy attacks. Set all of these to preferred.
Go reaver all the way down, and go all the way down the left side of two-handed.
Ranged AI runs into melee and dies, dual-wield AI is super squishy and dies. Bull has guard, and heavy armor and high DPS. I'm starting to turn my opinion on him entirely. Hes one of the best AI characters.
I'm currently running a high crit party with darius, varric, and bull with me as their tank. Bull does just fine. Hell, he does more then fine. He runs in, makes a tremoundous mess of the battlefield, and if he gets hurt he is even stronger. Even if he dies I know he still returned the favor on the enemy ten fold.
Too many people rate their companions skills entirely on survival. Oh, my companion didn't die, therefore he/she is the best. Nevermind what actual contribution they made to the battle in the interum.
Does anybody have him in the party wben killing dragons?
Does it get any special scenes when he is in the party as opposed to when you kill the dragon without him?
He koves killing dragons, but I figure he's the most useless party member for killing dragons. Aoe melee oriented, prone to grab aggro and somewhat squichy. Against the electric field charge dragon in Crestwood, he's job was to bomb Cassandra and then die.
No special scenes - still the beer swilling in the pub - but it's worth it to take him along anyway, at least once.
"Do you see that?! Please tell me we get to fight it!"
Plus you get his approval every time. That's awesome.
He is one of the best AI dragon killers too. Y'all gots ta stop the hate.
Build Iron Bull a guard on hit weapon, he is pretty bad ass.
The op asked to make iron bull tank while using full reaver. Problem is Reaver is a spec AI cannot handle well.
He will suck with your pre-requisites.
Why is he intended to have battlemaster? He sucks with battlemaster. Nothing says he needs battlemaster.
Get Block and slash, challenge, and bullrush. Now he has tons of guard and he can deflect enemy attacks. Set all of these to preferred.
Go reaver all the way down, and go all the way down the left side of two-handed.
Ranged AI runs into melee and dies, dual-wield AI is super squishy and dies. Bull has guard, and heavy armor and high DPS. I'm starting to turn my opinion on him entirely. Hes one of the best AI characters.
I'm currently running a high crit party with darius, varric, and bull with me as their tank. Bull does just fine. Hell, he does more then fine. He runs in, makes a tremoundous mess of the battlefield, and if he gets hurt he is even stronger. Even if he dies I know he still returned the favor on the enemy ten fold.
Too many people rate their companions skills entirely on survival. Oh, my companion didn't die, therefore he/she is the best. Nevermind what actual contribution they made to the battle in the interum.
Different strokes for different folks, I guess. I personally found Iron Bull to better to my liking with Battlemaster, 2H, and Reaver combo. As opposed to Vanguard. I set Combat Roll preferred and gave him a Guard on Hit weapon to make up for the Guard bonus. His survivability goes up quite a bit. I'm playing DW Rogue Assassin. I either use Cassandra, Bull, Solas/Dorian, and me. Or Varric/Sera, Dorian/Vivienne, Bull, and Me. The First combo is my goto for Dragons, Cassandra takes the brunt and Bull and DW deliver the DPS. Solas keeps us alive if needed. The second combo is more interesting AI wise and works great against large numbers, because he's pulls baddies into alot of Mines, Glyphs, and Traps. Allowing the DW to setup a kill shot.
He can tank with just warrior talents from one handed and shield plus vanguard. He can also work in a two warrior team, with someone else (preferably you) being a tank warrior and him being DPS warrior. Don't get any self damage skills from reaver, get the self heal and the "block and slash" ability from two handed and make it preferred. He can dps well enough. He is not the ideal shining companion but he is not useless either.
Dragon rage is what makes reaver, reaver but the AI is terrible for this spec as well as basically everything that isnt tempest or mage.
Its a shame because bull is one of the more amusing companions.
Baically if one does not plan to get dragon rage then its better to ignore that specialization outright. Now since ignore it on bull, Cassandra is always a better choice as her tree buffs every body and she will out damage bull via WOTH+spell purge combo.
Cassandra can't even dream of out DPSing bull unless his spec is ignored (why?). The DPS streaming out of bull is something crazy. Bull can use dragon rage just fine, and its use is the biggest reason why vanguard > battlemaster. His spec has all the DPS he can dream of, but with his health ticking away he needs to generate guard, or he will die.
I'm not positive, but I'm pretty sure that dragon rage doesn't hurt guard, just health, so if bull has lots of guard, and isn't your only tank, he can be as stupid with his health as he wants to be.
I use iron bull as my only warrior in my party. I think he's awesome. I use weapon and shield on him though, so that he always has guard or barrier (and the warrior's resolve skill gives much needed stamina).
I dont see why he would die fast unless you let him spam dragon rage and dont use devour.
Dragon rage is what makes reaver, reaver but the AI is terrible for this spec as well as basically everything that isnt tempest or mage.
Its a shame because bull is one of the more amusing companions.
AI has been fine in my experience, only using dragon's rage once in a while. But if its problematic for you, simply turn off dragon's rage for AI and use it manually! Its one of the more entertaining abilities to rek ppl with 
1h reaver is actually really strong. As you dont't really have that much extra stamina to spam the 2h abilities, the 1h passives are amazing, and that reaver is squishy as hell (cant dps when dead), this works really well.
Only a couple two-hand abilities cost more. Mighty blow, which isn't worth it, and earthquake strike, which is. Someone mentioned that earthquake strike's upgrade does far more damage then advertised. The two-hand abilities aren't spammable, they have longer cooldown times, and the two-hand passives are pretty fantastic too.
Shield breaker- crits sunder armor...on a guy with an AOE weapon. Hell yes. too bad its on the right side.
Flow of battle- Every crit reduces cooldowns on all abilities. Thats more devour, and earthquake strike with every swing.
Guard smasher- Should be renamed dragon's bane. +100% damage vs. guard on everything is awesome.
Stamina shouldn't be too hard to come by. Challenge adds guard and stamina regen, and bull rush gives a free ability every time its used. Warriors resolve would have been awesome, but I'm not ready to throw in and say two hand works against reaver skills. Ironically the AI is better at block and slash then I am. It helps them a ton.
I like to build him with points in every tree except sword & board or 2handed, depending on what he uses. Sometimes he can definitely make great use of the reaver skills/passives if he is controlled some, and he doesn't need heavy investment into 2h/SnB, battlemaster or vanguard to be really solid otherwise.
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