I haven't played mages since BC. I swapped them out for druids and shaman. BC was pretty hard core compared to now so I can't say much that will be relevant. Mages were all gear. The gear made the toon where shaman and druids the gear supported the class. Back in BC it was all about having your in-game macros set up properly. Blowing every and all cooldowns as soon as they were up. An unused cooldown is a wasted cooldown. Not trying to maximize stacks for procs was another thing. You were better off using a spell at three or four stacks instead of using extra casts to guarantee a five stack spell.

Back then, I'll repeat myself that it was all gear for mages. I spent a lot of time gearing to level instead of leveling and getting gear.

Some classes you just can't macro to perfect play like you can others. This is why Paladins and Shaman were so popular. You can one button macro them to perfect play. If you're trying to squeeze out extra dps from procs then I would set up ISBoxer to use the clickbar windows or the virtual space so you can see the procs and hotkey/click on them as they pop, wack-a-mole style all from one screen. ISBoxer is crazy powerful if you learn to set it up past repeating keystrokes.