There’s a decent amount this exp...off the top of my head, Skyfire drakes, elementals, some golems, goro basilisk, vp drakes/wurms, Etc etc. It’s not so much the quantity of immune as it is the difference between what a mage can do with and without fire based spells available.
Like Sancus said, every class gets their alliance. Mages are great for boxxing, theyre easy to handle and versatile. But I've had Zerkers straight up humiliate my Box-team. 1 Zerker matching my 3 mages pound for pound in DPS in fast grinding, and they dont require 3 of them to be present or a perfect symphony of spells and procs to achieve it. On an individual basis, I can only match a Zerkers DPS for 90 seconds once every 15 minutes, the rest of the time I'm 60% of them or worse.
The wiz in my group is my porter, evac, mana burn. If I want to 3 box it triggers wiz alliance using mercs. Also I sometimes need to play the wiz on raids. You could definitely add another mage instead but I wanted to have different classes in my lineup and I made this crew prior to alliances.
Not every group has a mage, shaman or enchanter and wizzy staff of flux is next to useless (or whatever the AA they replaced it with is called). My normal group is ranger, SK, Cleric, Beastlord, Me (wizzy) + 1 other (SK, Monk or healer merc so the cleric can nuke!) depends who is around
It resists fire completely with malo. You can call it resists instead of immunity, but yes, it's functionally the same thing.
At least with mages you can get some damage from your pets on them and don't have to mem a different spellset if you really don't want to. For me the big pain in the for casters were the NPCs (both named and trash mobs) that had Reflecting Ward: https://spells.eqresource.com/spells.php?id=45521
That's lame, probably gonna end up trying to balance the group out a bit instead of fully stacking one type of DPS + aDPS. Eventually, I can get around to leveling other toons to stack one way or the other, but for progression and the time being I don't think it'll matter. Originally, boxes was just a way to make things easier for the main (bard), but it's becoming a side hobby. Super easy to get alts leveled up in FM and I can pretty much fit the bard/sk into any composition I want.
At first you're just adding a tank so you can camp augs in old content more easily for your bard, next thing you know you've got a full six box setup and just booted your bard for a third mage so you can fulminate alliances more quickly.
Bard stays, but you're right it started off as a means to an end and has evolved into something completely different. I've got the 110 zerk, shaman, sk, 106 mage, mage, ranger, and a cleric/bst pair that I added last night at 82. (Edit: deleted image, way too big)
I actually logged in, just to say this mission still absolutely god awful for a first group mission into an expansion. You need to be T2/T3 AT LEAST in this expansion to beat this mission. You guys Really know your game.
Given no one has complained in a month and 1/2 since it was retuned... sounds like a "you" issue at this point.
One thing to remember, this mission is really harsh on melee based groups. I've found myself in groups without rangers a couple of times in the last couple of weeks on my shadowknight, and they tend to want a real cleric so that the monks and rogues can get group heals while they dps through the damage shields.
I personally received my achievement through a group consisting of Warrior, Warrior. Paladin, Cleric, Bard, Berserker. If you're still complaining about the difficulty try using your other hand?