I do enjoy using spirit mark for some fights, I suppose my issue would be fixed if I had better control over his use of it. As I'm away from my console at the moment I cannot check this but am I able to set his tactics to avoid using it on the last enemy on the field? If that were the case it would almost solve my issues with it.
I'm actually fairly surprised people are using normal skills more than the specializations on him- I would have thought everyone was ditching those skills in favour of necromancy. I think I'll give this a shot though, it's worth it to see if it improves my teams overall survivability. As it stands it doesn't seem like they can handle the simplest of battles if I;m not constantly micromanaging them..
Well I used Walking Bomb and it's an amazing spell. I also used all the passives which are pretty good. I didn't like Horror though(bad damage, tends to cast it on whatever I'm attacking with my rogue which then forces the mob to run away from me so I can't damage it) and Spirit was kinda meh considering the cost and damage versus just getting more normal stuff. Fire is excelent, Fire Mine does very good damage, Firewall is an insane control tool and does good damage and Immolate is just super nice. So that works out nicely. You don't need every spell in your specialization, some of them are just not very good.
Other examples would be on Solas I didn't use Veilstrike(doesn't do any damage, applies weakness but everything else also does, costs mana so no point), on Cassandra I didn't use the aoe stun at the end of the tree(costs way too much stamina, effect is largely unneeded), on Blackwall I didn't use Line in the Sand(super situational usage, AI is terrible at it, waste of stamina) and so on. Specializations have generally some good skills and some excelent passives, but there's nothing that forces you to take and use everything in them, and even if you do you have so many points you're gonna need other stuff, plus there's only 3 abilities in the spec trees anyway.
Now the spirit stuff sounds very "necro-ish" and all, but I played with it for 5minutes and just couldn't bother, it's just annoying. If you cancel it instantly via AI, it's just another dot that's not really that strong, if you don't it adds crappy spirits that also bug out stuff and what not and you have to constantly cancel them yourself, ugh.