Here's my uninformed take on mages at the top end/in the raid game:
They dont' get to really shine DPS-wise unless there's 2 targets, as has been mentioned, and most raids the goal is 1 at a time, resulting in there being better choices for the DPS spot on your raid to optimize the raid's DPS.
I've been told mage pets could really use some love, never really parsed/paid attention to one on a raid enough to say so myself.
Utility-wise the only thing you gain by having a mage in your raid is mod-rods and CotH. By the time you reach end-game your FT is capped, you have several clickies to regain mana, plus some class abilities that assist in regaining mana, making mod rods not all that necessary, even in a long fight. CotH is easily replaced by things like corpse-calls or running back to the zone/porting someone back up and having them run to the raid, since the zone is, 99% of the time, clear from entrance to raid.
The rest of mage utility is in their DS and summons, all of which can be done before the raid.
I can recall one specific instance where we actually paid attention to a relic mage pet's DPS on a raid fight, if I recall it was in the mid to high 500s, but we had given that mage pet two REDACTEDs that severely skewed that number, and it died either during the fight, or during the trash pulls shortly after.
What I personally tend to see with mages on raids is: constant waiting to re-summon their pet, gear it, buff it, make it useful, and even more swarm pets/monster summonings to get in the way/trap you behind mobs/mess up targetting with adds.
We've never really used a mage for long on raids in TU, I'd be interested to see if the new monster summon gives them a big leg-up like it did for beastlords, once it's functioning as is supposedly intended.
All that being said, I have no idea what would make mages more viable/make Aisling happy (lol). My initial reaction is to say give them an upgrade to their main pet (poor beastlords) and/or some more consumable summons maybe? Mod rods are great, I'd hate to step on cleric's murk-bead-toes, but maybe a summonable rune/resist buff clicky/atk buff clicky? (Even typing this it reeks of making mages an enchanter who makes clickies to cast chanter spells, yuck) I've said in another thread I'd really hate to see mages pack-muled with yet another summon, but short-duration/consumables would add a lot more to their in-raid utility.
It has been said that mages are still awesome leveling up, and do just fine in xp groups, fine line to walk there. Maybe the problem isn't mages, it's just the min-max crowd?
tl;dr: There are just always better choices for your raid DPS-wise from the min-max point of view, and most of a mage's in-raid utility just isn't good enough to worry about.
