Epic can definitely handle regular Geo's, the shaman's are a lot tougher and require some nuking

Yeah it's for cothing mainly, but the extra mana is useful for making rods too! The other reason it's so good for cothing is that there is a 3 second recast timer on the spell after you use a clickie to refresh the spell gem. Manna robe is a 3 second cast so it's the perfect timer to refresh coth.

Target Cothee
Cast Coth
Click Robe, target next cothee during cast
Cast Coth

It's the most efficient way to coth quickly and anyone who has a robe setup has an advantage over those that don't. It isn't necessary by any means, you can time it with anything. The robe/heart/hp regen item combo also is the only way for a mage to get extra mana back without gear or spells, why wouldn't you want that?

As for pets, they do fine damage against raid targets, an epic pet will range from 35-50 dps depending on the mob while a max level focused water pet will range more like 40-55. They definitely aren't used all the time, and are underused in my opinion. Considering that the DPS is essentially adding in half or two thirds a melee in addition to the utility roles of cothing, dropping rods, and casting DS it's nothing to sneeze at.

Mages are useful and needed on raids beyond just being bots, but generally you only need 1-3 active mage players in most raids, anything beyond that and you'd be better served with more necro's or rogues or whatever else the raid might need.

bots can take care of most that, if the active mage isnt training trash with their DA's then they are wasting time, my shit tier 5th alt pally does more then mage pet, let alone any good dps. I love my mage, but i love actively being in pulls/Training things. Mages have great tools and work great for working inside a pull team where they should be. Training away trash, Tagging in hub, PR trains, Emergency trains, DA to start engages, goaltending. Rods arent even needed with most raid squads since they bring 4x the amount of people required.

Any class can be botted...that being said, yes being involved in the pulls and trainouts in ToV is huge for mages. We still use rods on green, but I can see that as the top two guilds get zergier as time goes on where it would be more limited.

this.

unfortunately most actual mage players just warmbody

get good and get earth staff

profit

Join one of three guilds on Green.
Show up to raid, literally just show up. Repeat 100-400 times.
Once you have top DKP among mages track hate for better chance of drop.
Don’t get fucked over by the guild when it drops.

Essentially this, learning to track Hate and the PH's is the best way to get Magi kills, make sure you have the DKP when it finally does drop

Well you need to camp in Hate to have a chance, people cheat it, server staff is aware, they remove threads. We caught the guy doing it multiple time in the act.