Is magical party just way more difficult or am I just bad?

I played Honour mode with a friend in the classic version and we got to like 15 or something without any big issues. Back then we played a physical party consisting of Sebille ranger, Red Prince melee/frontline, Lohse Mage started specialized in water magic for healing(don't remember what she got in the end. Probably water+lighting and maybe some points in other for buffs), and Beast as a Summoner which I think dipped into Fire and Geo afterwards.

However with this playthrough combat felt very straight forward. Start out with the ranger and pick off a target or at least removing armor making other characters able to cc them. We never had any real problem in this playthrough, at least to my memory. Of course we took every slow and calculated, robbed and kill just about anyone for min maxing as much as possible. But early game to my memory felt way easier. With just summoner and archer picking off people from distance and if anyone got close the polymorph frontline just CC'ed the crap out of people, with knockdown, chicken etc. While with mages it feels like everything thing needs two CC to disable their turn. So I don't know if Definitive edition is a step up in difficulty, mage team is just way harder or way worse or maybe just start out real badly, or if I am just bad at playing a mage party.

In the definitive edition I wanted to run a mage damage party with my friend. As I loved playing Sebille and I got baited into thinking Elemental Ranger with the skill to dip in magic would make my entire damage magic damage, I was like yeah this can be fun. I found out this was not correct. As I remember having so many special arrows left over in my classic run I was like this should be easy.

So we started up, I made a Sebille Ranger trying to make her an magic archer. The other party members are Red Prince Summoner, Lohse water/thunder and Fane Geo/fire.

However as we are playing I notice my Sebille feels basically worthless. This is because I feel I am unable to prove any real magical damage or cc at the start. So being level 3. I wonder if everything is scuffed and I should remake a better party either by not playing any sort of elemental ranger and if maybe if civics should be swapped around. I normally play the character with thievery, and I noticed if I put this on Fane instead I would not have to waste time with lockpicks.

Anyways.

My level 3 Sebille has 3 in huntsman and 1 in pyro(because I thought this would be useful to enable fire spells to use Elemental Arrowheads ability as well as buffing up my character. I also went into Finesse and Wits to have more bow damage and to make sure I am first to hit. Civic is 2 in thievery which still feels bad because you can loot so little.

Red Prince seems to be fine on a summoner since he mainly just uses summons anyways. I however went a point into geo to get armor to be able to defend myself better. However I guess I maybe should have just gone full summoning instead.

Lohse is aero/hydro. Went for like healing and magic armor. But I feel like one might just need full out damage spells instead as when you need healing and magic armor you are already in a spot you should not be.

Fane is Geo/pyro and perhaps have wrong spells as well.

So I am basically wondering if this is fixable or should we just start all over? I feel my archer is way too weak and deal too much physical damage to do any real magic damage, I also feel mages maybe lacks damage to just kill things off.

What skills and abilities should one start with on a mage party? Assume we are going are going for Thievery, Persuasion(to let 1 person mainly do the conversations) and Lucky Charm for that exciting loot luck, who should have what and should the last one do bartering or something else?

Any hint on how to save the current lineup or suggestion for new starting team is appreciated. If either character is bad and should be swapped that can be arranged. I am personally not a fan on Lohse, but my friend seems to enjoy her wackadoodle craziness. But any hints on builds are nice.