I have the best group focus for my level on my mage (98) and I have 105 and 106 pet focuses waiting. I use the air pet almost exclusively. I'm not sure if the water pet is worth it just because it's difficult to get the pet positioned behind the mob correctly - I'm usually focused on positioning for my melee fighters (monk, bard, etc) and so the pet gets no love lol. Is it still worth using a water pet even if you can't easily position it correctly? Fire pet seems to be fairly worthless. Earth pet isn't really needed in my playstyle. Air pet seems to offer some benefit from stuns and still decent DPS (and off tank if needed). Am I wrong in my thought and should still use a water pet? I'm just using the hardest hitting nuke available. Doesn't it cancel out rains if you use a nuke? Also I am mostly mobile, moving from mob to mob with everyone auto assisting on follow. I would be nuking myself for sure with rains. That said I am confident there has to be more that I can get out of the mage than I currently am. Also I am not confident that GamParse is actually picking up my mage's nukes for some reason. Definitely if you have more advice on playing a mage to it's potential, that is something I really need to learn .. I'm used to playing melee DPS and have a lot to learn about casters (except enchanter, but that's a different story).
So for the mage if you are trying to max out DPS then Use water pet Nuke weave at level 98 Ruthless Servant (Level 95) Spear of Molten Steel (Level 95) Bolt of Molten Magma (Level 96) Fickle Flames (Level 95) Salvo of Many (Level 97) With Pally tanking you should already be stunning a ton, and the bard can mezz adds. In later levels the 'Chaotic' line will replace Fickle Flames and it will do enough dps that you will want to use it before the lower level spear, but until then Fickle Flames is the one to use. Also when you hit level 100 you will replace the level 95 Spear with the level 100 Spear and the 'Bolt of Molten Magma with the level 95 Spear spell.
So there are times that Salvo of Many is very beneficial and other times that it doesn't work as great .. but I guess it's worth keeping up with all of the swarm pets I usually have up, and having Fickle Flames enhance it. I also use Twincast before Spear's when it's up. I assume this is a good thing to do.
So on my mage I set up his weave like this (Keep in mind he is 115) Riotous Servant (Level 115) Twincast (Level 85) Spear of Molten Kromatiite (Level 115) Chaotic Pyroclasm (Level 115) Spear of Molten Arcronite (Level 110) Shockwave of Many (Level 112) Shock of Burning Steel (Level 112) Incinerating Sands (Level 113) I have all of these bound to my 1 key and I mash that key on the mage to spam them. I also have the Companion's fury aa and the mage robe clicky bound to that key as well to keep my pet burns rotating without having to constantly remember to click it.
Water pet will back stab from the front. You don't have to position them anymore. Just make sure you give them +backstab weapons.
