New to playing the mage and have couple questions
 

Ive always played melee toon and im trying out a mage and so far i like it. Im currently level 24 and have grouped or partnered up the whole time. Im just wondering how much of a exp decline it is if i was to solo with my pet? Im also wondering if anyone can point me in the right place to go solo. What zone? what to kill? all that stuff. ANY info will be helpful. Thank you in advance.

1) Hit najena get your 4 pet focus items.
2) Summon pet (fire) send it on mob.
3) When mob is at 5% back off pet, reclaim energy.
4) Summon new pet
5) Hit mob with a nuke that does 3% of more
6) Send pet to finish and get full exp

At your level it might be easier to just heal pet and take the penalty. Duno though played mage before the nerf

just get the Torch focus item and you can solo with that up until 55 tbh.

At your level I was kiting Splitpaw gnolls in South Karana. Nuke kiting is my favorite, though that may be because my main is a bard, and I kite everything. Pull with your bigest damage spell, then send your pet, and hit the mob again with another mid damage spell, and start running wide circles, while the pet finishes it up. This is best with a fire pet, or a water pet. This doesn't require the pet mods, but the sooner you get your pet modifiers the better.

After level 49 the focus effects dont do nada unless you get the ones from the planes.
Pet kiting really isnt worth mana. Instead of running around you could be medding and let your pet do the work. Pet kiting is best for outdoor named mobs

once you're like 29 or so, i think you can do unrest basement til 40 or osmething like that. then do spectres, then do seafuries, then group or bw.

Pet kiting is by far the superior kill method. Lots of exp and as you gear up and gain more mana you can do it incredibly effectively. Currently on my 52 mage with 220 int I can kill up to 10 mobs on a full bar of mana. Now for leveling you are at the perfect lvel to begin killing forest giants in the warsliks woods. There is a hill RIGHT next to the door into the fort that is safe to afk and pull up to. It's best to bind in the tunnel and sell there for max plat, but if you want you can run to the iksar by the watering hole in the OT to sell at half price. Stay there to 29, then hit MM. After MM I hit up Frontier Mountain for more great EXP and plat from giants, then I moved to hill giants for some insane pp. I stayed there for a horrendously long time (10 levels) before moving to seafuries until 52 where I am now. Doing all of that I have made about 80k pp and leveled very quickly.

Pet heals are not efficient at all. You will run out of mana before the pet kills the mob. Chain casting pets is far more efficient than trying to keep one pet alive. When pet gets low start casting a new one. Right before it finishes casting click go away and you will have a brand new pet. This also resets the xp penalty iirc.

Chaining firepets reclaim and nuke for final blow. Unrest until 39 then freeport guards.

I've been trying to find some details on the pet focus items. Besides reclaim energy, what do they actually do? Summon a max-level pet at all times? And at what level do they take effect?

Thanks!
-Rip