Why so few mages on P99?

[Velerin]

I'm sure lots of people tried and quit mages back when the pet agro was horrible. You could still be very efficient with pet chaining but it made a 1-dimensional class even more 1-dimensional. (pretty much if you nuked once you were tanking)
Mages are awesome solo against single mobs. As soon as you get an add things change fast. A mage must is a stack of root nets, which are relatively cheap but not really feasible for large usage or low to mid levels. CotH becomes a fun skill after you learn how to utilize the agro wipe component.
The most efficient mage solo is the most boring thing in the world. Make fire pet, pull mob, send pet in, med, chain pet if needed, reclaim at end and finish with low level nuke. In a place like OT you can do this with 0 downtime and move the bar pretty quickly. I personally found it much more fun to go into dungeons, utilize different pets, learn how to burn things down and control your pet when you get adds etc.
High level mages can do some decent solo kills and even some that typical "OP" solo artists have trouble with.
I've done:
Efreeti (had help clearing spawns though)
Sebilis bug camps
Undertow
Heirophant (almost.. got him to heal mode that lasted forever then finally ran oom and had to gate)
Black Dire (if something has high MR and doesn't summon a mage can kill better than anyone)