Well I was using 2 warriors, one handed(Roderick, battle mage, men at arms 5, pyro 5) and 2-handed(Madora). And 2 mages, Scarlet(fire,earth as start, later water, air and last witchcraft) and Johan(water/air/witch). I never had a problem in fight. Did whole Cyseal in about 10 hours and zero deaths. Braccus managed to wipe my team, only Roderick alive, he managed to survive(high armour, block chance, hp) and resurrect others. End game fight, no one was even close to death.
Later using fire/water etc essence and ruby I managed to get a gear with 100% resist against elements, but only for warriors. Because they were in the front, where mages casted fireballs etc. First I had only fire resist at 100-120%. Later with the perk(dont remember name, it gives you 10% resist to magic damage per rank in men at arms) I had resist 120-200% for everything except tenebrium(75%) and poison(90%).
At the end, my warriors were unstoppable. Roderick was with 2.770k HP, 244 armour, 67% block chance, 35% miss chance(for enemy), resist as I mentioned above. Madora had 1.9k HP, 290 armour, 47% miss(for enemy) and resists similar to Roderick. Both had leech, immunity to knock down,fear,cripple,weak,slow,bleed,blind and more. I managed to kill 6 death knights(lvl 18,in phantom forest) only with my Roderick, because everytime they actually hit him, he healed himself(perk leech) and lost only about 10hp
While Mages are great, they lack survivability(I had perk Glass Canon, so 50% off vitality). But they could cast 3-5 spells per turn. The bad side was that when lvl 15 hit them for 150-250HP, and they had only about 600. But then again, most of the time, enemy could not managed to get close to hit them.
So, what to say in the end ? Learn how to use your warrior. He/she can save your whole group because of high hp, armour, resists. Learn how to avoid environmental dmg, how to disable a lot enemies in one turn or how to kill several enemies in one turn. For example, herd your enemies with teleport and featherdrop(both mages had it in my play) to one spot, near your warriors, use dust devil and cyclone, finish them with fireballs or use self-inflammation(when warriors have high hp or high fire resist) and then boulder bash to knock your enemies out, poison them and then explode the fire and ooze.
