Originally Posted by Diestro

With my PvE fire el, I went mesmer for secondary. It helped with a bit of energy management and there's alot of helpful skills you can swap in and out depending on the area you're in, such as the mantras which can help stave off different damage types or counter interupts. I tend to use mes for my air spike pvp char also, for the benefits of interupt counter, although with the recent updates there seems to be fewer interupt builds around, and going with hex counters would be a better choice, something mesmer is also good at dealing with.

It sounds to me like you're just starting out in PvE, so it will be quite a while before you really need to think about any type of spike build. Many of the skills those builds use aren't available until late in the game. The basic idea behind any spike build is to do as much damage to a single target as possible in the shortest amount of time. Typically they are only used in PvP, but they can be viable in PvE, although with el's, area of effect spells work out much better in PvE generally.

Venus gave you the best advice anyone could. Play around with things a little bit, and find something you enjoy playing. Even if other people tell you you're nuts for playing something, if you can play it effectively, and you have fun with it, that's the most important thing.