During Dragon Age 2 I had the pleasure of being accompanied by Varric, who became one of my most trusted companions and even while I was a rogue, I opted to kee him around as a variation character for the sake of storyline. In that game at least I could customize my ability points to balance out his use of only one weapon. Sadly, In Inquisition Varric seems to truly be held back by Bianca (his crossbow) over time. I have decided to retire him for my all of my other playthroughs and only use him for conversation. I've used Sera in his place since she can be fully optimized, despite her awkward sensibilities. He started to cap out his potential with Bianca for me even though he had other buffs, modifications and upgrades available for Bianca. With Sera I already have a bow that has over 100+ damage. Yeah...sorry Varric. Has anyone else felt held back by Varric with Bianca? Is there any way to salvage his gameplay?

The most annoying thing is that there are no variations for bianca that are higher powered. 

I had that problem for a little while. Once I got all the Bianca upgrades though he became usable again. I went from Varric in the beginning to Sera in the middle back to Varric in the end.

How did you find use for Varric again at the end of the game weapnwise?  Was there another version of Bianca?

The final upgrades and a master demon or dragon gem brought the bow up to a decent dps.  That coupled with the high crit chance the upgrades gave (60something percent) made him usable.  I also turned off the caltrops thing as I noticed the AI tends to use that too often.  My playthrough was on hard.  I probably wouldn't have kept him in at all on nightmare.

I did something similar except when I switched to Sera I never went back. You can get his bow up to great DPS but it's to much trouble to go search for all this stuff. On top of that Tempest is just amazing and Sera was doing insane damage she was keeping up with my Reaver.

My hats off to you. My first playthrough is on Normal with a rogue. Its found it easier to drop him because I was a rogue and I needed a rogue on the bow with proper dps while i'm at level 10. Thanks to the battle system I can negotiate plans without having my characters cornered for nothing. I'll probably try that during either my mage playthrough on hard or my warrior playthrough on nightmare.

I ran into a similar problem.
He does decent enough damage with some upgrades but not as much as i want him to. I don't like serra and will never put her in my party but i'm considering cole.

My party is 1warrior, 2 mages, 1 rogue.
I really like the doubble mages. Makes it possible to almost always have a barrier up (unless dorian casts them at the wrong person) to soak up all the damage.

I was thinking about a two warrior, two mage run next round. Thats too much power to pass up. Heh

I was running as a Knight Enchanter Mage with Solas, Cassandra, and Varric for my main group most of the time.  Once I got the points to fully upgrade Knight Enchanter, it really didn't matter who I had with me.  Class is broken as hell.

Give him daggers. The upgrades Bianca gets are decent but can't compete with the highest tier of bows in the game.