descisions decisions

ok, i have not ever played this game, i know next to nothing about it, ive only read a little info. i just want opinions on how a death magic necomancer/fire elementalist build would be. and if possible some one do some testing to see how it is. from the info i have read, fire elm. takes alot of energy but my minions are "walking batteries". would this be a viable build for a nuker? would it be better if i decided to be a healer/death necro? why would either of those build be good or bad?

"Good" is a bit subjective. Neither one would be hideous, depending on the situations you want to take them into. A nuking minionator can work - you'll have lots of minions creeping around to screen your character from damage while they rain death on their enemies. I wouldn't really try it in PvP as Death Necromancers and Necros in general are somewhat subpar in PvP due to the scarcity of deaths and corpses. Much better in PvE where you can loot a mob for new minions and march them to the next pack of enemies. It's a similar story for Fire. It's subpar in PvP because the main point there is AoE and you'll never catch a good opponent getting too bunched up to make it worthwhile the way monsters bunch up in a mission. Other elemental lines are generally more effective and offer some other niftier side-effects, too.

Where the "walking batteries" comes from is through the Necromancer primary attribute Soul Reaping. It gives your character energy whenever something - teammate, enemy, minions, whatever - is killed nearby.

A healer/minion Necromancer/Monk or Monk/Necromancer can work well, too. Your minions will benefit from your healing as will the rest of your teammates. Although, I'd question whether you really need to go through all that effort to keep the minions alive. They're really not all that impressive by themselves.

Either way, it seems you want to run minions and then to do something else. That's a sound plan. Just a straight up minion Necromancer has problems getting started - you can't do anything without that first corpse. And if you concentrate solely on minions then you'll have a lot of time just standing around watching them do their thing. So, scooping another role, another task to perform while your shambling undead fill the field, is certainly a good idea. I'd just question the specifics, although it's hard to say more without knowing exactly what you want to do with it.

here are some *nukers*

http://www.guildwarsguru.com/nuker-id218.php

you might check out the builds directory to see if something strikes your fancy

You know this thread makes me wonder, would it be possible to heal your minions, or horrors, or fiends or whatever the case since they rot?

You can heal them, monks can heal them, anyone with a healing skill can heal them but their health degenerates over time at an exponential rate and eventually they will degenerate faster than you could heal. At the higher levels they do stay around for a few mins tho with no healing.

- Iczer

So would it be worth it to get healing skills jsut to keep them around longer or would it just be a waste?

Minions live to die. And when they do, you have Death Nova on them so they go out with a bang, literally. Also, with Soul Reaping their death is energy for you.

In the PvE misions there are ample monsters that die that you can make new minions out of that sways my opinion on pet healing abilities. Personally I wouldnt focus on it.

- Iczer

If you so wanna have a "pet" then you should go Ranger/Monk or Monk/Ranger with Beastmastery, you could have a pet that LvLs up too and keep it alive with monk-skillz....I dunno but I think the ranger to skills to keep his pet alive too....correct me if im wrong!

comfort animal
revive animal
several others

Hmmm So i suppose ill go with my kind-of-orginal plan of being a necromancer/ranger pet, and minions -drool-

I was thinking of building the same thing! ^_^