Originally Posted by
Saferis
In many unprepared groups where you cannot mount to get foodstuffs from the vendors, food can be neat. Plus, groups which lose members for whatever reason can benefit from a mage who can port them back to a city to search again. This may especially be useful for flex raids, where people may need to adjust their amount of players or whatever.
In a nutshell, the lock portal too can be said that it has no real use, as people can easily use the stones outside the raids and subsequently walk in to the next boss's room (or near it). Both the lock stones and mage portals are for convenience.
This being said, lust is key and in 10 mans without a shaman, you can't swap the mage. (Screw BM's lust).