Yeah, the mage heroes need some kind of area-effect, which has a lower cool down than 5 turns. Else they cannot survive. For example the Tyrant-hero, Naphy, has this Dark Spread, which is a nice "area-of-effect" skill. However it has a cool down of 5 rounds, and little Naphy is not big enough to survive the bullying from trolls and ogres etc. At the moment he kind of sucks compared to the melee heroes or the archer heroes. 

On the other hand both Tandis and Doro (dwarf) kan both stand on their own and may be a little bit overpowered. The same can be said about Peregrin Archer, stealing from the SK and giving to me, with a couple of archer units can win most battles before they even start. 

I have not played with the other mage heroes (the one, Ephy, from the flamers and other mage heroes). But I would recommend that mage heroes either have a reduced cool down of 2-3 rounds on their area of effect spells or other signature skills. 

I hope they give the mage some kind of Go-to-hell,MF-SK,Lt -kind of spell. 

Maybe an atomic blast spell, eradicating everything in 5x5 tiles with friendly fire. 

Example. 

For the little Naphy I would really like to see some kind of spell of mass destruction based on the dooms day counter, for example a better drain life dependent on every 40 points of Doomsday point. Or a skill with bonus when fighting in shadow tiles. 

For little Ephy the flamer, I think she needs a really big fireball, ARSonist, (dont know if she already has this). 

I've won with both the mages and the archer (normal, medium map), but the last fight was down to the wire. Every faction doesn't have to balanced, but a little more love for the mages would be nice, especially Elphaz who is by far the weakest.