Since this is a game based on magic, I am not complaining about powerful spells

But melee based heroes work OK, since my sidekick is one. They need different gear and some buffs won't hurt, but they can kick even tough monsters through the gates of Hades.

Melee champions are fine, especially if you cast buffs on them like, Growth, Stoneskin, Fireblade, or etc. Just because they are melee doesn't mean they have no magic, just less.

Stomping around as a 12 foot tall giant in platemail is pretty awesome.

I find melee champions to be better than mages overall - not that magic isn't useful, part of what makes melees amazing is all the buffs/debuffs that a few spell schools can provide, but my path of assassin/warrior/defenders tend to outshine my mages. And I say this as a player who usually plays a path of mage sovereign (Ceresa or Magnar) just because I like that playstyle - I still find my 2nd champion, usually an assassin,  doing the bulk of the killing and tanking (with some buff/debuff support). Damage spells are effective, but a melee can accomplish the same thing without mana costs or cooldowns or immunities, and can take a lot more damage while he does so, they're just more reliable/less limited.

Note that the balance is significantly affected by difficulty. If you play on expert+ difficulties, enemy health gets increasingly ridiculous bonuses, it makes it harder to just cast a damage spell and collect your xp - melees can deal/take more sustained damage than mages. For exactly this reason, I'm really not a fan of the whole: 'hey let's just triple everyone's health' idea. It shifts game balance and nerfs mages disproportionately - and you can't make damage spells competitive on ridiculous without making them overpowered on challenging. I think the AI also gets some production bonuses, allowing them to spam more trained units than you'd see on lower difficulties, again bad for mages with limited mana, cooldowns, etc. - not so bad for well-built melees that can shrug off whatever their trained units can do.

Edit: I should mention that it's still good to have a damage-dealing mage; there are situations where you just don't want to get into melee, Juggernauts come to mind. Then again there are situations where your mage is equally helpless/vulnerable and you just have to have a melee. I just think the melees come out ahead in more situations than the mages, provided they have some buff/debuff support (which is still going to cost you less than relying on damage spells).

Big thing is picking up the right champ perks for melee, Pick a weapon type and pick the damage amp perks for it, I especially like cutting since there are a lot of good swords and axes, I had a champ with the silver sword from turn 15 or so and he rocked all game, 12 damage + 10vs elementals and twisted, +5 from lethal, + 3 from finesse, then 45% from the cut damage perks made him hit hard, most of the time he'd take out lords of the flame in a single hit. Later on I found the berserkers axe (scrapyard ftw!), which is weak with only 9 power, but has maul so with his accuracy was typically 5+ hits at 18ish damage against dragons. Had another champ I got curgens hammer for by starting and not breaking down the second gate on the master quest, and he was hitting squads for 300+ damage (awesomely excessive ). Before that he had a great axe and was hitting for 30ish. Both were path of the warrior so could both tank and hit hard.

Sure a flame bolt could still hit pretty hard but cooldowns can effect that and you're burning a resource that could be used on overworld nukes, permanant stat ups, and hero buffs.

Everyone who likes playing a specific hero type thinks the rest are underpowered, because yours is effective, the AI champions are much less so.

I think that types are pretty well balanced, except that the warrior is slightly less good than the assassin (mostly because the warrior often does not get to pick his best trait on level up) and that the defender is a lot more of a general than a powerhouse by himself.

Some weapon-user archetypes you might not have discovered yet:

The elusive assassin: dodge so high that he _never_ gets hit, and criticals that ignore armor.

The master sniper: one of the crazy bows (lightning takes the cake), marksman, high initiative and he takes out the enemy glass cannons before their move.

The lancer: a great spear (the champion lance is still around, too many others got nerfed), a horse, double strike, and +3 hp on kills.  Watch him dash in and out and kill everything.

The sunderer: High damage sword (serrated greatsword is one of the best, but there are others), enchanted with Growth/Giant/Burning Blade.  Sometimes dragons die in one blow.

It used to be easy to get a hero who would even combine these.  Now it is harder, but I have had an elusive sunderer on 1.00.

That's not tue.

I want to play a magic user, and relive my AD&D glory days ...but I also want to survive. And in FE, it seems like fighters have a significant early and mid game advatage.

Well, this thread was started by someone who thought that magic users completely eclipsed fighters, so it seems that some people have no trouble fielding powerful spellcasters.

Personally, I have found that Death mages, Fire mages, and especially Death&Fire mages can be utterly devastating at high levels.  Once I had a Fire&Water mage who was not only burning everyone to a crisp, but was also doing it for practically no mana (I do think that they nerfed the stacking that allowed her to cast for 5% of the spell cost)

You just should not expect to have a mage very powerful early on.  It takes a while to get all the bonuses to spell damage. 

Personally I prefer my mages in a support role - buffing and cursing.  Even the worst mages *cough* Porcupine *cough* are amazing in a support role once you build them an army.  That army can keep them alive after you decide to split your mage sovereign from his/her first champion.

I think what will fix a lot of this is if equipment had qualifiers to them such that they could be limited to use by only certain champion paths.

This way, mage equipment (while potentially overpowered if equiped to a fighter) would be restricted to Path of the Mage....

etc etc.

Then you are living your AD&D glory days.  Mages at the lower levels in D&D were weak.  They needed a good fighter to keep them out of trouble.  In the mid levels they could really contribrute to the group, and at the upper levels they were awesome.

This game is the same.  Procipinee needs a troops to go out with her in the beginning.  However, in the later levels, she can be force all by herself.

Yea, I don't really get the changing shards to death, that doesn't seem to be that great on a choice.  In fact, it might be the worst choice to change shards.  Guess maybe the demons are better?

I typically use support magic, with a majority of the damage done by trained units or my main Champion who sits in my Sovereigns pocket all day, However it is mostly likely, since I don't focus on mana, that my Sov is melee. Getting the best of both worlds. I like using Water and Life, but some times I add Wind into the mix (Any of the 3 in combination depending on the race, class, or playstyle). Sometimes the champion is a spellcaster, some times its an archer. I've even had a Sov Path of the Defender, while playing it as a mage with Life/Water/Life just to assist my ranger Champion, who got outclassed pretty quickly when a fortress became a Strike Tower...

It's the multiple element spells that really get me. Wind/Water Gentle Rain to be quite powerful in areas with low essence but you need more population. Water/Life Cloak of Oceans (?) to be useful for spamming mass heal/buffs/counterspell(Mana gain on the water one is great specially with other reductions)/thunderstorm. Wind/Life, the name escapes me, but it allows your units to act instantly after it is cast.

What supporting elements I choose tend to effect unit design. Going for glass cannon (metal saving?) style units Wind is a must, combing it with life practically allows for double damage (spears and ranged attacks draw no counter attack so its often 'free' damage), if the enemy is also slowed, and your champions are hasted, then expect many white wash battles. Add in life's 'shrink' then you can negate a large amount of physical damage to your glass cannons when up against a larger foe. Haste and growth your hard hitters (with some fire resist equipment or the earth ench if lucky) and you have a two man dragon slaying machine.

Something about using indirect magic tactically is that "magic immune" enemies wont hamper on your strategy too much. Since much of the focus is kept on casting spells at your own troops. And skills like fireball can be picked up by the Anointed Enchantments gained through research, should you really need them. You can also skimp on spell mastery and focus on spell resistance to avoid getting countered. Or cast the blue magical invuln spell.

Support allows for more adaptability should your situation not be what you were envisioning. Earth has some pretty sweet unit enchantments, but I prefer to bank my mana where possible, and regeneration can be a pretty handy 'after the fact' version of stone skin/cloak.

Then again death gets oppression doesn't it? It's like inspiration and enchanted hammers on a much vaguer scale! (Wail is a pretty nice non-shard nuke too I guess)

Too many walls of text, concision is really hard.

If you want to see truly disgusting amounts of spell damage, get yourself a Brilliant Warlock with Death and Water.  Horrifying Wail does just over the top damage, and it scales with your caster level instead of depending on you finding shards to boost it. 

(3 dmg per level) x (L10 caster) x (1.5 boost from Warlock) x (1.5 boost from Path of the Mage) x (1.25 boost from Evoker I which is easy to get) = 84.375 dmg to every stack on the table for 18 mana if they do not resist.  With Brilliant you should have at least 105 spell mastery by L10, not counting other perks or equipment or anything.  This is enough damage to kill basically an entire army of trained units, and severely damage everything else.

Hell at level 3 this does 13.5 dmg per stack, which is enough to kill huge screens full of wolves, bandits etc all in one shot.

Bonus note - some of the posts above are talking about, it seems to me, stacks with several heroes in them.  For the endgame of sacking cities this is probably acceptable to some degree, but you need to be aware that multiple heroes split the exp up in disadvantageous ways.