I get 30k sustained with bard but that's cheating...then I can add bard on mage and get a better sustained too. You guys are also using raid as a comparison which favors the melee over the caster.
Seems the top mage in the parse above actually died during the 45 fights I showed. Also the blank class is a caster merc on burn. Without raid gear, mage is higher than bst for sure. If bst can get some gear, it becomes closer but mage still wins out I think.
To be honest, I can skew my parses but I'm trying to give a fair comparison with both in grp and not an optimzied scenario that favors one over the other. Hell, I can show you parses of my grp ranger doing 40k-50kish sustained but let's be realistic....I like rangers sorta but they're not topping the bst/mage on sustained.
As for mage mana issue, yes it's quite a problem initially with KA unless you start tweaking it heavily. When I first started using KA with my mage, I kept thinking, god mages suck...what is the fuss. Then I thought about how I would play them manually vs automated and adjustments had to be made. Also, the speed of the fights had to be taken into account. My dps was horrid trying a rain (which in non KA world, most mages use). One rain, fight is already over and my dps looks worse than a warrior. Hence, going to fast nukes but not mana efficient. So, I moved force of elements, host of elements, servant of ro, into holies, added mod rods, gather magnitude, mana reserve, water form (if cant be mounted) into KA buffs, added icebound sliver into dps lineup. Don't do relenetless servant (too mana intensive), use fickle as my go to nuke, try to keep a constant burn up (ie fire core, frenzied burnout, etc).
I tried to do the same with bst and they do come very close but mage beats the bst in grp gear. On burns, without outside help like a bard, chanter, sham, mage burn is a lot higher than bst. I think the synergy you get in a raid will depend on length of fight. I think the bst beats the mage in shorter burns (I dont know this for sure) but the mage beats the bst in big boss fights over 2-3 mins (someone has to verify this.....this is from reading forums so I dont know).
Realistically, I think for the OP, the mage is better and easier to get started. There's a reason they are probably the most played class. Mage in EQ is super ezmode.....I don't even recall the last time I even healed my pet
BTW, neither one of these is my "main" class. I've lots to learn about all classes.....I play all classes adequately but not optimally so anyone with good advice that contradicts anything I said, please share.