Well the mage tamer is still a useful general purpose template. You can change anything beyond the skills you consider essential, in most tamers that's tame, lore and vet. But it really depends what you don't like about the template and what other skills you're interested in. And most importantly, whether you just want to make small changes or you're really bored with that template and want a total re-build. I think the best idea is to play the template you have while you're getting back into the game again, then you'll be able to make a more informed choice about your template.
From generic mage tamers I've created a stealth shepherd, a disco provo bard tamer, a disco spellweaving tamer, a necro spellweaving tamer and I've got a fisher chef tamer. So you can go in many directions.
When I build a tamer, I start with my taming skills, decide how high they need to be and those skill points are allocated. Then I decide which other skills I want to keep and which I would be willing to change. I also look at any skills which I could safely lower and get some skill points back. Once I know how many free skill points I can play with, I can allocate them to another skill and see if the template is well rounded. By which I mean that I can keep myself and my pets alive, can do some damage and can function with or without pets.
You may also be in the position where you have other skills on that account which could be stoned over to your tamer. I sometimes find another template isn't being used much so I'll re-mix it into an odd tamer experiment. It's a quick way to give your characters a fresh interest especially if you're returning to UO and don't want to be training on your first day!
Wenchy
) and use slayer spellbooks and as much sdi i can have/afford then try to heal my pet as little as possible to save mana for offensive spells