Necro/Elem,Elem/Necro What's the diff?

Time for nooblet questions!

I definately want a necro - elem character. But I can't decide which way round I want it. Does it really matter? Does Necro/Elem do something better than Elem/Necro and vice versa?

Also, out of interest, how many minions can one have at once? And how can you get rid of the ones you do have if you need to?

Sorry for silly questions, just started today and don't want to fluff up my character!

Depending on your primary, you will have different armor sets, the ability to use your primaries runes and the primary attribute for that profession.

N/E could wear Necro armor sets, use Necro runes and has access to Soul Reaping.

E/N could wear Ele armor sets, use Ele runes and has access to Energy Storage.

You may only use runes of your primary class to boost stats, so if you're planning on being a minion master, you'd have to settle for weaker minions as elementalist than with necromancer. Also, the class-exclusive attributes (i.e. energy storage, soul reaping) benefit more respectively the skills of the primary job (most of the time).

You can have an indefinite number up in theory, provided infinite corpses and no degeneration over time.
Skills such as Taste of Death help thin the number if you're looking for a quick fix to a situation in which you need to destroy a minion. Otherwise, just wait out their natural health degeneration and let them die on their own.

Good news is you can always change many aspects of your char., so little will be "fluffed". The difference in the 2 character types is primary attribure. As a N/e, you would have soul reaping available, which will give you energy every time something dies (allies, enemies, and minions). As an e/n, you will have energy storage, which gives you 3 extra max. energy per attribute point. Neither of these have many skills associated with them (soul reaping has 0), so that's something to think about, but shouldn't make a big difference.

The other big thing is attribute points, and runes. You can only use runes for your primary profession. So as a n/e, you could have necro skills as high as 16 attributes, but el. ones only as high as 12. Vica versa for el/n (16 for el. skills and 12 for n).

Can't help ya with the minion question, sorry. And they die over time, so that's how you "get rid" of them.

the ele main special attribute is energy storage which for each point put into it gives u an extra 3 energy. the necro's is whenever a creature dies u gain energy equivelant to the soulreaping attribute. thats the main difference besides the runes.

runes for characters. each charcter has their attributes exp. wilderness,fire,water, axe mastery,
but only your main type can add runes for their attributes.
for example. your a necro/ele, you want to add a rune of minor death to your armor, well since your a necro main then you can, but not if your a ele/necro because ele is your main type. so when your a necro main your can't add runes of fire,water,energystorage, etc. to your character's armor.

you can have all the minions to your hearts content. minions have an increasing health degeneration, so they will all die eventually. there are skills to keep minions alive and there is a skill called taste of death i believe that steals life from a minion and heals yourself. thats the only skill i know of that can basically kill a minion off instead of waiting it out.

hope that answers your question.

having an ele and necro to completion, big differences, few examples quick and dirty

want to be a minion mancer? necro only
soul reaping is key (death cycle - energy), pumping DM is key (max lvl minions).
An ele could never be close to the minion mancer a necro can
soul reap doesnt have skills, but the ability to gain energy as mobs fall is a nice bonus, crucial for MM

want to use the big time nukes/'echo' nuker? elementalist only
maxing out the key element and handling the exhaustion you need the mana pool. A necro simply couldn't handle the exhaust nor bring as much noise to the party. You could have a 'glyph renewal - meteor storm' necro say to mimic, but won't have the energy pool w/o energy storage, and will additionally exhaust out.

Can they work together though? Certainly.
But just like many other choices those runes on the armor (and the +1 'hat' of choice) and the primary attribute line has some important reprocussions.

Examples of working together-
E/N using Necro Elite Virulence, simply toss a condition spell (ie blinding flash) and followup with a whole lot of [armor avoiding] degen damage amongst your DD spells

N/E using Ele Elite Glyph of Renewal, use your favorite skill repeatedly and its not an enchantment and no points cost in an attribute line, Elite Glyph of Energy similiarly knocks the big minions costs (25e two of them) down a lot.

These are quick examples and certainly you dont need to grab the alternate elite to make it useful - you may want it from your primary Take a look at the options, and realize you're capped at 12 for any secondary line (and that will cost a lot of attribute points), meanwhile your primary gets minor runes for every line (+1), a hat (+1) and one superior (+3) for one line is common.

to the above post, they were asking about N/E or E/N "echo" is a mesmer skill hence all echo nukers are E/Mes if your looking for all out damage id go with E/N you still can nukem all w/ energy storage, use wells to help regen, or curses for even more dmg