Firstly, a number of the environmental effects are bugged and a little excessive. I would expect this to be fixed or toned-down in coming patches. But yes, part of playing a mage involves not blowing up the rest of your team, which will hopefully get easier when some of the aforementioned bugs get sorted out.
I had an instance when playing the only mage in a fight against Migo, where anything I did resulted in the death of party members. So I swapped out my poison wands for a club and shield and stuck to support spells. Later on in that same game, I was able to put down some massive AOE spells because my party had some decent magic armour and they were happy to soak up the fire/poison/electricity while the enemies with low magic armour walked themselves to death or were locked down to be finished off.
Communication with your team is going to be vital in this game.
