So You Wanna Raid...

[Alrin]

Always have blessings!

Find out who the whispercast paladins are.. and spam them every 5 (or 15 in the case of imp salvation) minutes for blessings.  Then convince the others to use whispercast so you can get mights/salvationsghts/kings and whathaveyou midfight.
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Hear hear!
Whispercast makes things a whole lot smoother and easier imo.

For mages:

Mana conservation is very nice to keep in mind. We have a high cost, super nice spell called Arcane Missiles. While this is excellent dps, it is nowhere near mana efficient.
Compare this to frostbolts and you have a much more manageable mana spent/second situation than you would have if you were to spam AM for the entirety of a giant/destroyer fight and go oom when the raid switches to the 2nd target.
Even though I use frostbolt quite often (though I am firespecced) I do switch to AM at times when I get a clearcast proc or if I want to increase the burn for a short while I will not put myself in a situation where I have to drink after every single pull.
Its up to every mage to find this balance themselves though.

A mage should also hopefully recognize the importance of stamina equipment. While mana is our dps-blood, a dead mage with 1000 extra mana is no use to the raid. It is very possible and achievable to reach 4k+ hp fully buffed with "standard" blue equipment if you have been running pre-mc instances.
Please, harass your local paladins for Kings. It's just THAT good.
However, while int is our dps-blood, increasing sta and int will not do much to increase your overall damage. That's where +damage gear comes in.
The reader should exercise good judgement here and not go completely overboard with damage either, but try and find a good balance.

The trick is to do great damage while still metering or keeping control of your damage output and making sure you don't inadvertedly draw aggro.
It can be tricky if you score a series of crits but then you should be able to step down for a few seconds before you resume dps-ing.
Other than that, mage is pretty easy. Just pay attention to where the mobs are and you can stay alive very very very long.
Oh and use fire ward liberally when in MC against gehennas, magmadar etc. Its not much damage absorbtion but its a bit and every bit counts.

Have fun!