How to go about making a Necromancer?

hey all,
i just got the game and i really like the look of the Necro's. They look cool and they seem good but it seems not alot of people use them. Why is that? I was thinking about making a Necro/Elementalist. What i think i want to do is hang back and make tons of minions and use air/fire strikes to support my minions. Is this a good setup or will i get owned?

My first character was a N/E, and still use him, let me tell you why.

An N/E is very effective because they can deal *a lot* of damage very quickly to an entire group, whilst still surviving themselves quite easily. You're elem skills will provide you with a great nuking aspect when coupled with your necro death skills. You can use your minions quite easily as meat shields and batteries and you can heal yourself in a pinch with Vampiric gaze, Soul Feast and Unholy Feast. I tend not to use curses so much because I'm more direct damage rather than warrior assistance orientated.

This is a FUN class which tends to deal out damage with gay abandon. The only problem with it I find is if you havent got many corpses to make minions or harvest you can run out of steam quickly, but whatever your killing is usually dead by then.

Hope this helped!

Your plan sounds pretty good.

I've played a primary Elementalist as my main character since the game came out, and he really can bring the pain with those air and fire skills.

Recently I started an N/Mo focusing on Blood and Healing, and this seems to really rock!
In PvE, I've got 4 vampiric skills that steal my opponent's life for me, and also healing breeze and Mending. I can't stress enough how useful mending has been to me.
With the combination of mending and the blood skills, I can effectively adventure solo, not with henchmen, but pure solo. That's something I never could do with my Elementalist.
In PvP in the Ascalon Arena this build has been serving me well too. I cna take a solid beating from a Warrior and hardly be feeling it. The only thing that really shuts me down is a memser using energy denial tactics. I'm already down 1 pip due to mending, and none of my skills cost less than 10 energy, so I quickly hit the bottom of the barrel. Once I'm there, if the mesmer can stop me from getting back up to 10 energy, I'm really just about useless.

I played as a necr/ele too. It is quite a blast. Hard to beat the flare for some quick easy damage. And nothing like a firestorm to take out a target that is obstructed. I did switch to monk in late game (when you can)....but that was because the last several missions are kinda hard and it is so nice to have a little self-healing and rezzing capacity.