Necromancer/Elementalist Help

[Bathemael]

I've only had this char for a few weeks now. I'm level 13 N/E, and i've soloed(using only the help of henchmen, not players) pre-searing, post-searing, and all the quests and missions up to borlis pass.

So far i have most of my focus on blood magic. but i've got a few points in death, curses, soul reaping and fire magic. Not having GW handy to check, i would guess that my stats are:

blood 11(9, +2 rune)
death 6
curses 4
soul reaping 4
Fire 7

something like that, although i may have inflated some of those stats cause i can't remember them exactly.

Anyways i was wondering what i should focus on to have a good PVE experience since i prefer to just use henchmen. Eventually i want to look for a good guild and develope my PVP skills. So if anyone could give me some good input on what attributes i should focus on so that i can continue along as i do and not run into a major roadblock due to lack of ability at higher levels, it would be much appreciated.

Also i'm wondering what spells and skills seem to be the most effective in this build? currently i switch between using vampiric gaze, vampiric touch, putrid explosion, life siphon, deathly swarm, fire storm, fireball, phoenix, flare, and glyph of lesser energy.

Most of the time i'm doing missions or exploring i use a fighter henchman, a healer, and either an archer or mage(i just got to yak's bend and found that there are more henchmen options but i haven't played since i got to yak's bend). Generally i use AOEs on the casters and life suck the tanks, only having to deal with death if a pull gets more than ~4 mobs.

Two other questions that have been nagging me lately that maybe someone can clear up for me:

-When fighing with henchmen my vampiric touch will sometimes do double damage. i can't determine if this is due to a spell/skill from one of the henchmen(healer, mage or archer?) or maybe because i am using the vampiric touch on the back of the mob? if anyone knows what causes this to happen it would be helpful so that i could watch for it and exploit it more.

-glyph of lesser energy doesn't specify that it only works on elementalist spells but it never seems to work with my necro abilities. is this because it's limited to only elem. abilities or is it because of some distinction between the abilities being spells vs skills?

Any input is helpful at all, i'd like to maximize my potential with my first char and not have to rebuild it after i get to late game and find out i'm useless. thanks

-Bath

[Kaleban]

Not to bash your choice of primary, but why did you pick Ne/E instead of E/Ne? From what I hear, Soul-Reaping is useless in PvP, and most people say a Necro primary is not a PvP character even!

I suppose if you chose a minion style build, taking advantage of skills like Death Nova and Taste of Death, you'd be better suited to utilize Soul Reaping. But since you seem to like sucking blood and the occasional nuke, it seems Energy Storage from the Ele as a Primary would suit you better.

[Morganas]

Not to bash your choice of primary, but why did you pick Ne/E instead of E/Ne? From what I hear, Soul-Reaping is useless in PvP, and most people say a Necro primary is not a PvP character even!

I suppose if you chose a minion style build, taking advantage of skills like Death Nova and Taste of Death, you'd be better suited to utilize Soul Reaping. But since you seem to like sucking blood and the occasional nuke, it seems Energy Storage from the Ele as a Primary would suit you better.

Even without death magic, I've been told you get more energy per battle from soul reaping then the additional max you'd gained from energy storage.

Still, better to go E primary so you can pvp and energy storage has some very nice skills linked to it.