ele/nec with minions or ele/r with pet?

i want to be a primary elemental, but i like the idea of having pets/minions fighting while i cast from farther way with either fire or air attacks. can someone help me decide to use minions or pet, and whether to use fire or air?

i'm using a nec/ele, and the problem i have with summoning minions is that their health decreases automatically pretty quickly, so they won't stay around for very long.

can't comment on fire/air cos i'm still at the beginning of the game, but i intend on using earth to stay alive longer...

You will need to up Death Magic to actually make your minions stronger. So unless you are using other skills from that attribute, it's a waste.

You will have to lvl up your pet to make it stronger but don't need to boost Beast Mastery if you aren't using skills. Of course this will be time consuming to lvl.

It really depends on which idea you like. A permanent, stronger pet, or the ability to summon multiple minions and not worrying about if they die or not.

Fire really isn't that great. It has a lot of AoEs which can make it beneficial in PvE, but not the best line. Air is great for PvP and pretty good for PvE too, but it all comes down to which you enjoy using more. Test out both.

oo...so if i dont need to put attribute points into beast mastery, i could do both fire and air right? nd il just spend lots of time lvling my pet ...so im now considering majority of points into energy storage, fire, and air so i can be both pve and pvp...with a few invested in beast mastery for that small boost. comments?

why doesn't areanet just make a earth , wind , fire ,and water creature an ele can cast as a pet type creature..
with just casting the creature sig and makeing it last a time before creature dies (like flesh golem for necros)
would make the ele a little bit more devirse

because the ele is already the most diverse class in the game?

E/N with minions = sucks
E/R with pet = sucks

Quote:

N/R with a pet with 0 beastmastery and the tougher minions (Flesh Golem, Shambling Horror) works quite well in an area with few corpses

N/R is alrightyou have the advantage of having pet as a very good way of distractign them and prevetning them from getting up to close combat, along with being able to have a horde of minions but there are a few problems.

A: Usually Minion Masters usually have just death magic spells and maybe one or two healing skills from another class (otherwise oyu wont be able to sustain your minions that long), so a pet would get in the way of this as you would most likely hae to have three non mm skills. Comfort animal, Charm Animal andTroll ungent etc...

B: There are not many combos for N/Rs, there are a few good ones but not as any as lets say a W/Mo.

My advice would be E/Mes seem to be popular along with EMOs. If you are determined to have either a ranger or necromancer as secondary class I would go with ranger purely because pets i think offer alot better protection than minions if you can only afford a few protection skills. Pets can be espicially good if you make them hearty by hardly ever boosting their attack and getting them ot a high lvl. Also I find taking comfort animal makes a big difference to as oyu can ressurect htem afterwards only heal as one seems to be better. If were not after a shield thoguh I would recomend a E/N as a friend of mine has one and through a mix of fire and blood magic is able to wasily take down higher lvls than he is.

There IS a 4th option... Go Rit/N. With Ritualist, you can have Channeling, which is a lesser version of Air Magic, and with Spawning Power and Death Magic, you can also have minions. With the Rit/N Explosive Creation build, you can drop Channeling to go full Death Magic, and buff Death Nova, if you really like AOE damage. However, going Channeling/Death/ and maybe Spawning will not be quite as effective as going with the "established" builds. (Rits also get little-to-no love.)