I disagree on both accounts. Banshees are +90%/-80% vs heavy range, with -40%/-50% debuffs. Lower attack range, but twice the movement range of Blossom Princesses. More health, too. Against HR? Yes please.
Dryads are similarly +90%/-80% vs heavy melee. Against HM+LR combos like in the current tournament? Yes please.
Unless you can oneshot those HM units that banshee fails for exactly the same reason as the sorceres fails.
In laymans term you hit those units once, and then they strike back, because of your limited range
While those blossom mages / priests simply cannot be hit and have 2 or more turns to destroy the enemy without repercussions, this is the difference between heavy losses and no losses at all.
And that dryad is useless for another reason, it's power is -damage from the enemy, both the archer and the ranger have -defence.
In laymans turn after the second hit they hit a lot harder than than the dryad ever will.
The main danger for your archers are enemy mages, who can hide behind other units and hit you from a distance, so if there is an enemy unit you want to knock it down instantly. and heavy melee + mages is a common combination.
You can easily knock down those heavy melee units with any ranged unit, but those pesky mages you prefer to oneshot them, this is where those rangers come in with an amazing damage bonus and extra move space to walk around that terrain that prevent you from oneshotting them.
And if you are up against pure heavy melee, then the priest / blossom mages will be much more powerfull as no heay melee unit can evet get within striking distance.
For the past several years (untill the bears+ spire combo) the tournaments was a recource management game where the main goal was to reduce losses as much as possible so you could go ahead as far as possible.
Both banshee and dryad fail in that regard.
I would day try and test it out, the person who can prove that in a mage oriented tournaments the bashees on average will have less losses than priest / blossom gets a pint of beer from me.
Mortars don't suck that much if you have leveled toads and phoenix. Elves get blossom princess only one chapter before frog prince, and don't have usable mages before that moment at all.
3* sorceres and 1x blossom are somewhat comparable in some situation the blossom is better in the other the sorceres, both arent great indeed.
Blossom mage is unlocked in the fairoes chapter and gets it's 2* promotion at wizards and dragons. temple of toads ain't unlocked untill the end of halflings. same with the 1* toads, and a 1 star toad is worse than a 2/3* mortar, its gets 2* and therefore similarity at the amuni, and only surpasses the mortar at the elvenar chapter.
I have played humans several times now, and even with the fire phoenix it's a horrible struggle even to play lets say 15 provinces, you get so many autolosses with mortars it ain't even funny anymore, quite often during heavy range tournaments in the early and mid game you start using "other type" units, just because they give better results.
The only difference between the mortar and the frog prince is the special power, but that makes all the difference between near useless unit and an awesome unit.
and if I have to pit the sorceres vs the mortar the sorceres compared to the mortar is a godly unit for quite a while. sorceres is bad, but by far not as bad as the mortar. (except 1* sorceres she seems to be worse/up to par with the mortar)
Once you have unlocked frog prince you might be able to mix / match mortar and frog prince as once a unit has incurred the penaly from the frog prince the mortar should be fine to finish the job. but I never tested this. nor have I checked the initiative value to see if it could work.
I never made it that far with a human city to test that out. I never got beyond the elemental chapter with a human city.
edit: one huge advantages the sorceres has over the mortar is that it can take advantage of mage buff buildings. this makes it more viable at most levels than the mortar who only has the fire phoenix.
