buy all skills?

i've been wondering if i should buy ALL the skills for my characters (for example all necro skills for my necro, all elementalist skills for my elementalist), or should i just stay with the main ones that are mainly used in builds

keep a healthy supply of money and tomes so you can get the skills if you need them. Otherwise dont, there are some skills that are pretty much never used, for instance atrophy.

The only ones you need are the useful ones. That doesn't add up to much, so feel free to buy skills that look fun or interesting. When I played through Prophecies the first time (and a few subsequent playthrough's as well) I bought all of the skills for both my primary and secondary profession. As long as you don't otherwise spend a lot of money on things you don't need there's enough cash. I'd say buy what you'll be using, then find a balance between saving money and buying what else you want.

Only if you have the extra cash to waste, lol. Prolly be better to save ur money and use tomes you find to get skills instead. Can do Z-Elite with some friends to get enough faction to unlock skills in pvp, then tome it onto ur pve char. Will take time, but better for it to take a while than to be broke from spending all the money you have on skills you won't be using ;-) In short, don't just go crazy and buy a bunch of skills all at once, but slowly accumulate them so you don't feel any pressure on your funds ;-)

Returning player and from what I gathered from this comment... it is possible to unlock PvE skills buy simply buying them through Balthazar faction and then using a skill tome on your character? Having never used tomes before I always assumed that they were limited to only skills you unlocked on other characters.

Yes, you can unlock skills via Balthazar factions and then learn the skill using a tome on your character (skill must be for your 1st or 2nd profession).