I don’t know what the “popular” thing to do is but I decided to try something differently.
I’m a Necrotamer Mage so My template including gear is:
140 Magery
113 Eval Int
105 Necro
100 SS
120 Taming
110 Lore
100 Vet
Sadly I have no meditation; I need to tweak a few things so I have extra lower mana cost and mana regen. I use lich mode a lot in chain-heal-the-pet situations.
With this setup I equip a spell channeling -20 Mage weapon with 15 DCI.
Effectively, I have 120 Weaponskill for defensive purposes. I also have 55 DCI (Quiver, Fey Legs, Arcane Shield, Imbued 1H weapon). For a mage I’m pretty hard to hit, although not the hardest – some people are running around with 70 DCI, I haven’t yet found a way to get that in my suit. Although it works “well enough” at spawns; I rarely get hit by low stuff so it saves power as I don’t have to heal myself as often.
Resists are more than acceptable with halfass gear; 68 physical (when I use PROTECTION, so I am OVERCAPPED on physical), 70 fire, 70 cold, 68 poison, 75 energy (elf).
To keep my skills high I use an imbued Ring and Bracelet high on skills: +13 Magery, +13 Taming, +13 Eval Int, and 2 other properties. I normally wear the Totem of the Void, but when I’m taming a high level creature I have a hotkey macro through the enhanced client to swap in the Birds of Britannia +5 Taming/Lore talisman to bring me to 120 Taming/110 Lore. I tamed a greater dragon last night in 3 times, solo, with no honor, and did not die. That was awesome.

The rest of the time I have “enough” for control purposes, and run around with 115 taming/105 lore.
Very adaptable character for various spawns/bosses/situations, although PVP and mana-intensive situations are rougher on me. I'm looking into solutions for those issues, they are both caused by different things...