Guide to playing as a necromancer
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[edit] Overview
The necromancer is an extremely flexible profession that can fulfill a variety of roles. The major roles expected of necromancers currently in PvE are Spiteful Spirit necromancers (also called SS), Minion masters (MM for short), and in certain cases Spoil Victor necromancers (SV for short). Major roles expected of necromancers in PvP currently are Hex shutdown. However these popular builds only show a fraction of what necromancers are capable of. Because of their popularity it is advised to tell your team when you plan on doing something else.
[edit] Attributes
[edit] Soul Reaping
This is the primary ability of a necromancer. Whenever a creature dies, the necromancer receives energy equal to the rank of Soul Reaping. This is an easy, but at times unpredictable and unreliable way of energy management. There are only eight Soul Reaping skills, three of which are elite. A particularly useful Soul Reaping skill is Signet of Lost Souls, which can be used for active energy management.
[edit] Blood Magic
Blood magic revolves around the taking, giving and sacrificing of health. Many skills like Shadow Strike or Vampiric Gaze steal life from foes, ignoring armor and defenses completely. Several blood magic skills require a sacrifice of the necromancer's own health. Caution is advised since such skills can lead to the user's death when they are used in a bad moment. Blood Magic also contains the powerful Blood Ritual and Blood is Power, which are often used to boost the Energy regeneration of other party members (particularly monks).
[edit] Curses
A curse Necromancer uses his abilities to weaken foes so that his allies can easily kill them, or to hinder them in many ways. Shadow of Fear and Enfeebling Blood will render a group of fighters useless. Barbs and Mark of Pain can amplify damage on a foe. Some curses skills also deal direct, armor ignoring damage like Spiteful Spirit, Feast of Corruption and Desecrate Enchantments.
[edit] Death Magic
Death magic revolves around the use of corpses in a variety of ways, but also includes skills that deal cold damage and cause harmful conditions. The most widespread usage of death magic is to create undead minions. For a detailed description see Minion master.
[edit] Equipment
[edit] Weapons
Necromancers primarily use a staff or a wand together with a focus item. They are available for each of the four attributes. Staves and wands linked to blood magic or curses deal dark damage in most cases, while those linked to death magic and soul reaping deal cold damage.
[edit] Armor
The best default armor value for necromancers is 60. However, a variety of insignia can increase the armor significantly.
[edit] Understanding the Profession
[edit] PvE
[edit] PvP
[edit] Staying alive
Depending on how you play, your survival strategy will be vastly different. For example while using blood magic and curses, use skills like Enfeeble and Faintheartedness to lower the damage of enemy attackers and life stealing skills to regain health. When playing as a Minion Master you can use your minions as a shield and skills from your secondary profession to heal yourself. Try to stay out of harm by means of kiting. When using standard armor without increased armor rating, it is advised to avoid getting attacked directly. Proper movement and positioning can reduce the damage taken from melee and ranged attackers.
[edit] What to avoid
Some skills have rather long casting times. When using these keep an eye on enemy interrupters.
If you are using minions, enemy area of effect damage can quickly decimate your army.
Watch out for large groups of fast attackers, your best bet is to send your party out first so you are not the main target.
MM's should use upgrades on their equipment in order to shorten the casting time and improve their abilities. While battling enemy Necromancers, you may often find yourself fighting to find sufficient corpses for your minions, so having resources that decrease casting time will benefit you greatly.
[edit] Play styles
[edit] Blood is Power
This type of build, often abbreviated BiP and commonly referred to as a battery, uses the core Blood Magic elite skill Blood is Power to provide Energy support for allies, particularly Monks. Blood is Power is often accompanied by Blood Renewal to recover Health. Often BiP necromancers use equipment to reduce their maximum Health, thereby reducing the sacrifice amount, however this makes it necessary to stay back and avoid aggro, which is impossible in some missions and dungeons. BiP Necromancers are more common in PvE.
[edit] Minion master
A minion master, often abbreviated MM, is a type of necromancer build which relies primarily on minions. Generally, a minion master relies directly on minions for damage, trying to keep up a large army of powerful minions, useful elite skills include Animate Flesh Golem and Order of Undeath. The minion bomber is a minion master variant which relies on Death Nova (and, for ritualist / necromancers, Explosive Growth) to deal damage, animating large numbers of cheap minions using Animate Bone Minions, often accompanied by Animate Shambling Horror, for elite skills, Animate Flesh Golem or Jagged Bones can be used to reduce reliance on corpses, while Icy Veins can be used to provide non-minion-based damage. Minion masters are generally restricted to PvE and Alliance Battles because of the small amount of corpses to animate with in PvP.
[edit] Spiteful Spirit
This type of PvE build, often abbreviated SS, relies upon the Prophecies Curses elite skill Spiteful Spirit, often accompanied by Arcane Echo. It is particularly useful against large groups of tightly packed foes. Because it only needs 1 or 2 skill slots and isn't Energy-intensive, running a Spiteful Spirit build allows considerable freedom in skill selection and attribute distribution.
[edit] Spoil Victor
This type of PvE build, often abbreviated SV, relies upon the Factions Blood Magic elite skill Spoil Victor. Spoil Victor is particularly useful against healers, multi-target attackers, bosses and small groups of powerful foes. Like Spiteful Spirit necromancers, Spoil Victor necromancers have considerable freedom in skill selection and attribute distribution. Keep in mind that SV will only work when you (or another party member) has less health than the hexed foe, so it is useful to decrease your maximum health by a manageable amount and use the Monk Core skill, Protective Spirit.
[edit] Choice of secondary professions
Being versatile, the necromancer can be played with any secondary profession. However choices are somewhat dictated by the desired play style, and it is also possible to completely ignore a secondary profession by using only necromancer skills and attributes.
Monk, Ritualist or Paragon is often used to provide a reusable Resurrection skill.
Warrior: Protective shouts or stances from tactics are useful for Defense.
Ranger: Mainly used if some spirits are needed by the Party.
Monk: Benefits especially minion masters with some strong healing skills, protection prayers (Protective Spirit) are useful for builds that run on low HP for sacrificing or even 55-HP farm builds. The Minion Master build requires keeping minions alive, and AoE healing skills such as Heal Area make this easier.
Mesmer: If there is a free slot, some interrupts are also quite useful. Many Domination Magic skills can be used in conjunction with skills in the Spiteful Spirit build, such as Empathy and Backfire. Necromancer hexes and Mesmer hexes can work very well together as many of them do similar things. The Mesmer skill Arcane Echo can also be extremely helpful for a Spiteful Spirit or Spoil Victor build by allowing the caster to apply the hexes to multiple foes at once. The skills Hypochondria and Epidemic are also excellent additions to the many necromancer skills that cause and transfer conditions.
Elementalist: Sometimes used for energy management or for support with some wards that protect against damage. Glyph of Lesser Energy provides energy management in high-energy builds, and some builds include Earth Magic wards to support the backline. The elementalist secondary profession also allows the player to take advantage of extremely powerful fire spells that often times attack multiple opponents and have very low energy requirements.
Assassin: Sometimes used by builds that need running skills or defensive Skills. Some hex spells, such as Augury of Death, and conditioning skills are often used in PvP areas in spike builds that deal additional damage based on conditions.
Ritualist: Soul Reaping can be used for a much greater energy management simple ritualist can provide; some minion-related Ritualist skills work well with minion master builds. He also makes extremely capable healer basing on reaping and restoration magic.
Paragon: Sometimes used to support the party by bringing some chants or shouts. "Fall Back!", "Go for the Eyes!" and "Never Surrender!" can be used with minions.
Dervish: Strong, efficient self-heals supports minion masters which sacrifice life very often. Many minion masters use the Dervish enchantment Mystic Regeneration as a form of self healing to counteract the life loss from Blood of the Master. This combination can become increasingly stronger with more enchantments like Dark Bond, Infuse Condition and Aura of the Lich.
| Guides for all Professions |
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Core:  Warrior •  Ranger •  Monk •  Necromancer •  Mesmer •  Elementalist
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Factions:  Assassin •  Ritualist Nightfall:  Paragon •  Dervish
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