. I know 500 aa's seems like quite a bit and may feel like too many and honestly you can stop anywhere and just move on but since we mages (I know this isn't always true but it's a fair generalization) tend to be at our most powerful, relative to the mobs we xp on, the level that we get our new level of pets my assumption is that when you hit 500 you will make negligible gains in AA until you hit level 76, perhaps only stopping to pick up something particularly cool or useful rather than going all out or even half and half for AA's.
Also regarding groups, I wouldn't worry that much. ... This is sort of a bad thing to say, but you don't need to be a particularly good mage in a group containing a tank and a healer at 71, and any group with a tank has at least a merc healer. Assuming the tank is capable of holding agro and pulling less than 3 mobs at a time if he can't handle them you can get by with an acceptable gain to the total dps of the group by throwing one or two nukes onto a mob sicking Gabober on it and managing not to get yourself killed. I'm not saying that you shouldn't endeavor to be a better mage in the group but simply that being a passable solo mage is harder than being a passable group mage. Hell most of the time people will just be glad that you're actually still there and trying in a pick up group rather than afking for hours or actively getting everyone else killed.
About your gear. I'd look into replacing your two rings and maybe even your earrings with dwerium trio junk it's fairly cheap and would make decent filler slots unless you need focus effects and such (I can't see which are on what on eq players but I think the bloodcalling ring has a fire focus which might be why it's still there) when you hit 71 I would start looking into other ring and earring options to upgrade from the dwerium but until then they are probably better than what you're using. Also since you have the sweeper which I believe is the pet focus a step up from the drowned man's hair look into a belt upgrade possibly through the hotzone tasks which are given by Franklin Teek(sp?) in Plane of Knowledge near the guild hall gate or maybe the bazaar gate I can never remember which, alternatively you could buy an upgrade in the bazaar probably.
For the dwerium, http://www.kyros.info/Tradeskills/JC-Calc/" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false; . Is a useful tool input your data pick a taaffeite which provides int and whatever else you want then add an emerald for extra mana and whatever you like in the last slot, I'd go with opal for extra hp but peridot for extra ac isn't terrible nor are any of the resists if you really want to max that out. All the parts you see are made by jewelcrafting iirc and are pretty cheap on the bazaar last time I checked on E marr and the combine to put them together can be done by you in the little bird baths which you use for normal augment combines. You can also get the compartmented versions if you like but they have an extra 5 levels for recommended and I figure you probably have so many empty slots for augs if you just returned that you won't get to filling everything but your rings until after you get past 71 and upgrade to something else.
