Not sure what to do with squadmates in combat

as the squadmates level up they basically prime and detonate on their own ive noticed, it takes a few levels.

I normally use them as choke points in areas we need to defend, or pincer them to attack while I take the middle. It works for the most part, but lacking full control of power usage I think was a misstep in the games combat design. 

Unfortunately, your best bet is just to just level up their powers as much as you can. You have to manually decide whether their powers prime or detonate and that's usually near the high end of their power trees.

Also, in case you don't know, you can use the directional arrow buttons to command your squadmates to hit specific targets, and usually if they are told to attack a target who's been primed, the AI is smart enough to go "oh, I'll use my detonator power on that one."

It's doable, it just takes some leveling up and has a bit of a learning curve.

Gone are the days of tactical control of the battlefield; now executing a biotic or technical explosion with a squadmate is left up to chance.

What I do is prime enemies with Overload, then I use focus-fire on the primed targets, and if I'm lucky one of my squadmates will have an ability available to detonate the explosion...and if I'm really lucky they'll actually use the correct ability.

The downside to using the focus-fire command is that it usually forces your squad to leave cover and wade into the thick of combat -- and since I play on the Hardcore difficulty, that means I'm likely going to get my team killed for daring to orchestrate a tech-explosion.

Serves me right, I guess...Mass Effect is an action-shooter now, so I deserve to be punished for trying to play it like a strategy-RPG.

The are basically my suicide squad...

See a Fiend? Click 'X' on the Fiend. Go kill off other things then come back to pick up their corpses. Sometimes it is so entertaining that I stand there and watch them... 2 of them cant take down a fiend.. Cora and Drack, they are the best. Always get close and get eaten. I feel bad not helping but... with squadmates like this, I feel that they need a lot of training

I normally just set them to target the most important enemy (shield, armored, boss, etc) in the group, and let them do their thing.

I don't take Cora or Liam with me anywhere, as their primers just seem to get them killed on the 3/4 difficulty.

I play in insanity and I ignore them the 95% of the time and for me they are nearly useless talking about the combat (I like them as characters) the rest 2,5% of the time I use them when I'm out of ammo in my both weapons and there are armor enemies (the ones with yellow hp bar) because I mainly use biotics and if I'm out of ammo I do 0 dmg but even then I can say that my Remmnant IV is more useful. Finally the other 2,5% I use them to see where are stuck the enemies because using biotics I can say that when the enemies fly away with biotic detonations they clip everywhere! It's insane, under the floor, between walls,etc... and I see where the teammates point their weapons and star to use melee attacks to walls (sometimes if they are close i can hit and kill them) or doing Novas to the floor etc haha and seriously using biotics the clip bug on enemies is insane.

Squad mates in action.

Team 1: Human Squad vs Fiend. I must say, Cora has some skill... just some. Not enough



Team 2: Dextro Squad vs Fiend. Much better but still....

Well... the Squids squad.... They are the most worthless of all... they cannot even be proper meat shield. More like I was their meat shield.

Jaal is doing my job observing the fight better than me!! What a wuss! Cant even take aggro!!!   Totally useless these 2. At least the rest were entertaining. 

Additional problem I found is that I can't deny them power usage. I think in MET there was an option to only let them use defensive powers automatically, leaving offensive power usage to the player's discretion.
It looks like they'll use all the powers they can at the very first second of combat, so when I start off by setting some enemies on fire, they have nothing to detonate with.

I pick squadmates for missions for roleplaying reasons, and cut scene and banter content. But I've always found them to be an annoyance in combat for the most part (getting in my way all the the time, ruining my shots or making me waste a power by taking out a target "prematurely"), so that they're more hands-off on MEA is something I like.

I also never liked freezing combat to use the wheel, and always directed them in realtime, so I've adjusted fine on that level to the new system. At the same time, I miss being able to hotkey at least ONE of their powers. Not because it was particularly handy--it just feels weird not having that level of control anymore.

So a mixed bag for me, but mostly leaning in favor of MEA's way since the AI is now catered to my mostly-hands off playstyle instead of me having to fight what the devs intended before.

I just let them do what they want because most of the time, they don't do anything. That Krogan is alright, he can tank when he wants to.

I ignore them mostly.