Guide:Necromancer

Attributes

Soul Reaping

"For each point of soul reaping, you gain 1 energy whenever a creature near you dies. You may only gain energy in this way 3 times every 15 seconds. Spirits only provide you with energy if they are under your control."

Soul reaping is a passive attribute, it is the necromancers main source of energy managment, and is very effective with MM or pets, which will die often, giving you energy. There are very few skills in the soul reaping line,the non elite skills are used for health and energy managment where as the elites are shutdowns degen, and spikes.

Blood Magic

"Many Necromancer skills, especially spells which damage and steal health from your foes, become more effective with higher Blood Magic."

Blood magic focuses on stealing health from enemies through degeneration or direct life steal. Blood magic also includes a variety of supportive Wells which give allies buffs in an area. Blood magic also has spells that can be used to directly buff allies like Blood is Power and Blood Ritual.

Curses

"Many Necromancer skills, especially hex spells which reduce your foes' effectiveness in battle, become more effective with higher Curses."

Curses magic focuses on stopping enemies from functioning effectively by limiting their ability to attack, cast spells, or defend. There are curses spells that are very effective for each of these three goals, many that cause foes to miss, cause energy degeneration, or cause foes to be unable to block.

Death Magic

"Without Death Magic, you can control no more than two undead servants. For every two ranks of Death Magic, you can control one additional undead servant. Many Necromancer skills, especially those that animate undead servants, manipulate corpses, and deal cold damage, become more effective with higher Death Magic."

Death magic is used for exploiting corpses to create minions, cause damage and conditions, do direct damage, or spike heal yourself. Builds that focus mainly on the Death magic attribute are usually Minion Masters that focus on maintaining a large amount of undead minions that fight for them. They can also be used to cast potent offensive wells like Well of the Profane. The Death magic attribute is also the only attribute in the game that can cause Disease.

Types of Necromancers

Minion Master

This type of Necromancer is most commonly used in PvE and AB. It focuses on summoning an army of undead minions with skills like Animate Bone Fiend, and then keeping them alive with skills like Blood of the Master or Heal Area. A variant of this is the Minion Bomber which focuses on rapidly summoning a medium amount of minions using Animate Bone Minions and then casting Death Nova on them followed by a skill like Taste of Death which causes Death Nova to trigger.

Curses Necromancer

Curses Necromancers use a variety of debilitating curses to hinder enemies. Curses spells usually limit the enemy's ability to attack and many cause health degeneration. These types of Necromancers most often focus on shutting down the enemy's ability to do damage while at the same time causing damage through the use of skill combinations like Reckless Haste and Price of Failure or the elite spell Spiteful Spirit. There are some Curses builds that focus on shutting down enemy spellcasters using spells like Wither and Malaise.

Death Magic Spiker

These Necromancers usually utilize an Assassin secondary for the skills Augury of Death and Signet of Toxic Shock. They then use high damage skills like Toxic Chill and Deathly Chill to both cause poison, which allows Signet of Toxic Shock to hit, and do a large amount of damage triggering Augury of Death.

Spiteful Spirit Necromancer

Most often seen in high end PvE areas such as The Underworld this Necromacer plays a support role usually causing damage while an Invincimonk tanks enemies. Usually this Necromancer uses a Mesmer secondary so that it can use Arcane Echo in conjunction with Spiteful Spirit to apply as many copies of Spiteful Spirit as it can which causes huge amounts of damage.

Tactics

PvP

• For Curses necromancers:
  • Spread your hexes around and always make sure to use a cover hex(Parasitic Bond for example) to keep your more important hexes from being removed.
  • Don't focus on one target for the whole match search for the enemy attackers that are cause the most harm and shut them down.
• In general:
  • Necromancers are often a high priority target for enemies due to their powerful offensive spells that are often hard to remove due to easy to apply cover hexes so be aware and be ready to defend yourself.
  • If you have them, use spells that exploit corpses as soon as you see Soul Reaping trigger because that corpse usually won't be there for long. It will be quickly ressurected or exploited by another necromancer.

PvE

• Summon and maintain minions as efficiently as possible, only use damaging skills before any enemies have died or once you have the maximum number of minions for your level of death magic.
• Exploit AI that does not refrain from attacking and cast spells that cause damage when monsters attack (mainly Curses attribute).

Skills

Curses

• Reckless Haste is one of the best skills when used in combination with skills that penalize for attacking, like Spiteful Spirit and Price of Failure.
• Parasitic Bond and Defile Defenses are both excellent cover hexes.
• Corrupt Enchantment and Rip Enchantment are great for frequent enchantment removal.
• Rend Enchantments and Gaze of Contempt are good for mass enchant removal.
• Vocal Minority effectively makes most Paragons useless.

Blood Magic

• Awaken the Blood powers up both Curses and Blood Magic skills.
• Blood Ritual and Blood is Power are both very good for providing allies with energy.
• Lifebane Strike and Shadow Strike both do a respectable amount of damage as long as the target is above 50% health.
• Although difficult to maintain without a specialized build Order of Pain and Order of the Vampire are great party wide offensive buffs.
• Life Transfer is a good offensive and defensive spell giving you a moderate amount of health regeneration and causing the same amount of health degeneration to the target.
• Spoil Victor causes large amounts of damage and can even be used to target enemy monks since they will usually have more health than the person they are casting spells on.

Death Magic

• Order of Undeath Jagged Bones and Animate Flesh Golem are the most common elites used by Minion Masters.
• Toxic Chill is the most common elite used for direct damage.
• Rotting Flesh is the only skill in the game that directly causes disease to the target.
  • Tainted Flesh is an enchantment that causes disease to whoever attacks the person with it. These two skills are often on the same bar so that the user can cause disease to enemy spellcasters as well as attackers.
• Well of the Profane is a great AoE enchantment remover albeit it can be hard to employ at the high cost of 25 energy.