Ad aspera

Primordial Fire or Igg, in my personal opinion, don't seem like the most appealing options, especially considering you have to sacrifice extremely scarce Action Points to use their bonuses.

In principle, this is fine; it's an option purely for those who are really keen on playing as a Nature or Fire mage, but not Bardilar. Although, if you were to add stats to the first one, for example, and give the second one a skill for free, it probably wouldn't be any worse.

If you need a comparison, Igorroth and Brumma give you magic skills that are just as good, completely free of charge, and have much stronger base bonuses.

But it seemed to me that they have some of the worst passive bonuses. You're always waiting for buffs and healing, while tripled Dreghich checks not only give near-immunity but also increase attack.

30~

That's quite a lot. It's about a third of a warrior's Dexterity. The thing is, ancient units essentially have three layers of defense, which very quickly turn into four: anticipation, knockback, evasion. Plus, a shield for one-handed weapons, plus a second chance for anticipation for two-handed weapons, plus parrying for halberds. Two-handed weapons have a similarly weak bonus to evasion and no parrying or shield, and one-handed weapons have a bonus to stats that unlocks very late. It's just that in the ancient unit, the "main" thing is the additional skills.