no offense taken, i'm not saying you're bashing mages. i think if you surveyed players, you'd find 9/10 of them would choose necro over mage. they're just more powerful.
the point i was trying to make was that if you place a premium on versatility and variety, whether of gameplay or capabilities, as most people do in this game, then necro is the clear choice. mages are for niche players who just love blowing things up with nukes while also having the strongest pets in the game. and yes, the nukes work great outside of raid targets. even more so than almost any class, since mages have the best line of resistance debuffs spells (slightly lower than a shaman's but still gets the job done)
i want to point out in your reply, that the mage pets can kill a lot of things - more so than necro pets or any other summoned pets can. so i assume you are referring to raid targets, in which case a necro's pets and offensive spells are equally useless as a mage's.
the specter pet (EoT) is definitely cool, but it's still weaker than a mage's pets in the endgame. the wiki has its HP at 2700, while an unfocused earth pet at that level has 3200 hp while also being able to root. a focused water pet in the endgame has about 3200 hp as well, while also nuking for >100 every 6 seconds and backstabbing for 168.
but anyhow, a mage at 60 can run around with monster summoning III - so i can have a specter pet, a zombie pet, or a mummy pet if i'm in the right zone
[You must be logged in to view images. Log in or Register.]. as well as any other form of NPC that is not humanoid - it's fun sending a griffin pet to smack things too. caveat being that there are no special stats/abilities between them, but hey, i'll take a 3450 HP pet any day if it can look like a mermaid or even a dragon!