Looking for opinions to help me decide.

There are two concepts I want to go with, but I can't decide on which sets to go with. I've narrowed it down a bit, but I'm not sure how to pair everything.

My two concepts can pretty much use either demons or necro. One will be Dark Miasma or Storm, the other Thermal. I don't want to duplicate anything, so my choices are:

Demon/Thermal and Necro/(Darkor Storm)
- or -
Demon/(Storm or Dark) and Necro/Thermal

The first concept is an evil guy from ancient Egypt, and he will be whatever combo ends up with Dark Miasma or Storm so I can color it like sand. Set gave him powers to control the sand, and would either give him demons or undead minions to control.

The second concept is a very flashy stage magician who accidentally summoned demons or undead during his act. The ensuing chaos cost him his career, and he now has to cope with being unemployed and followed by demons/undead.

How would you combine the sets? Which way fits concepts better? Which has more min/max potential?

Personally, I'd go with Necro/Dark (so you and the lich can give each other high fives as you spam dark powers together) and Demons/Thermal (for stacking resists). The one combo I personally would avoid is Necro/Storm, because the KB can be tough to use well when combined with melee pets.

That's for gameplay reasons, I'm not sure which would work better thematically.

Use well, with skill and purpose, Necro/Storm has the tools to be a BEAST!

The ancient Egyptian guy definitely needs to have Necro. I mean, c'mon, you can say he's summoning Mummies instead of Zombies and stuff, and name them crazy things like Nephren-Ka and Imhotep. Heck, you could even do a bit of research online to come up with actual historic names of Pharoahs to use as the summons, and save Ramesses (the most famous Pharoah, of course) to be the Lich. Yeah, that could work! And as was stated earlier, Necro/Dark would work very nicely for this.

Plus, the stage magician concept definitely seems more like the Demon summoner. I mean, where's he getting the undead from "accidentally" on stage? Did they build the theater on an ancient burial ground? Seems a bit far-fetched.

I also think the stage magician would look better with Demons, especially with that whip - the Demon Tamer! Ooo... make him look like a circus act lion tamer... that would be cool.

Necro Storm because most of the pets are melee and between hurricane and mist and maneuvers it will be helpful defense wise to keep them alive.

You could go Thermal with Necro but then that would leave Storm for demons. Since many of the pets for demons are ranged or more mixed at least I can see it causing an issue for you.

I just think that Necro Storm will sit better then Demon Storm from game mechanics perspective when combined with your declaration of choices.

Demon/Storm is full of juicy chaos.

I have seen storm with a sand theme. It works. Scirocco for tornado. Kind of a shimmering mirage for steamy mist. There are electrical sand storms. You can get raining sand downwind of a major sandstorm - kicked up and dropped down from hot air currents.

I agree that storm works really well for sand theme, I already have a storm defender like this. I'm just starting to worry about how well I could control everything. I've never taken storm very far. I have no doubts that it would crank out some serious orange numbers, though.

Hurricane should make holding the aggro easy enough.