I don't know anything about new Ness other than the new effect for PSI Magnet.
I see you on here all the time, I know you aren't dense, but please read more. . . I'm not attacking the character, I never said anything doesn't fit, you simply aren't actually providing information about the moveset. You're just saying "mage," but what actually is she doing and what's it for? I haven't actually played the game, but there are a ton of characters in Touhou (the fighting game, not the bullet hell) that could roughly be called mages insofar as that they use magic, but that's not a description of what any of them specifically functionally do. There are all sorts of different character archetypes and so on, and what's really asinine is thinking that "she's a shrine maiden/goddess/whatever" is a good description of what kind of character she is. It's not a character design, it's a vague visual flavor at best.
And if you think characters in Smash in general are designed with nothing particular in mind, just what looks like it makes sense... I really don't know what to tell you. Have you ever actually looked closely at a fighting game, Smash or otherwise? It's not just about how the choreography on the move looks (though I wish NRS would care about choreography), it's about the playstyle, which is as vitally important to conveying the character as "hey, I remember her forward special from X game." Normals are most of her moves, so they necessarily define a large part of her playstyle. With the account that you're giving me, I could shrink down Zelda, change her specials and smash attacks, and it would fit everything you've said about Ashley. Likewise, I could also port nearly any other sorceress from any other game, no matter how they play, change 7 out of ~30 moves, and it would perfectly fit your description. Other than hexes, does Ashley poke a lot? Does she rush down? Does she have slower attacks? Multi-hits? Evidently it doesn't matter so long as all of the attacks look like she could plausibly do them based on her choreography.
Do you see the problem?