Mage question
 

So I'm playing a mage to see what I'm missing out on with the whole pet thing as a wizard. I got the stuff for my focus quests and I'm level 12 now and my pets are complete monsters. Most of the time I just put the pet on stuff and sit there while it beats it to death.

Big question: Does my pets damage shield count towards its damage for reasons of me outdamaging it to get full XP on the mob? As for now my nukes are mainly for turning the tide of a tough fight for my pet. That is okay, and what I had in might. I plan on chain casting later on. But for now is my pet's damage shield part of my pets damage?

As far as I know, damage shields do not count towards anyone's damage.

Your best bet is to either do over 50% of the mob's hp in damage yourself or kill your pet when the mob is low and have a fresh pet finish it off. (You will still need to outdamage the new pet)

Damage shield is neutral damage. It isn't credited to anyone, it just reduces the mob's HP.

Your ideal solo strategy is summoning a focused fire pet and reclaiming it before the mob dies. Then finish the mob with a small nuke and summon another fire pet. This ensures that you get 100% of the XP every time. This is also much more efficient than keeping a pet and constantly healing, DSing and hasting it. The key to solo leveling a Mage is looking at the fire pet as a DoT, not a pet you want to keep alive. Each mob gets DoTed (fire petted) and the fire pet is not expected to stick around for more than one mob. 200 mana to summon a fresh fire pet gives you tremendous damage from the DS, the pet's melee damage, and most importantly the full HP pool to allow the pet to tank the mob (which is basically a CH). It's extremely mana efficient, especially since you can med through the kill. With good mob selection you shouldn't have to chain summon multiple pets until 50+. So you basically level up to 50 killing mobs nonstop for 200 mana and change, most of which you med back during kills and reclaiming from the pet. Very fast and easy XP once you get the hang of it.

Couldn't say it any better.