A lack of defense

I've noticed this on a lot of my newer guildies' builds, just in general:
They really don't have any defense.
Being a long-time necromancer user, I really feel the need to alert newer users to some rather nice defensive skills.
On Blood Magic:
Blood is one of the easiest to use and by far the most self-sustaining style of Necromancer. But a lot of players are overestimating the self-healing value of this attribute. So here's a suggestion: Demonic Flesh. It's a 62 second long enchantment with 16 blood magic, and adds an impressive 200ish HP to your maximum HP. Sure, you sacrifice 20% of your health when you initially use it, BUT the great thing about it is, you will ALWAYS end up gaining after it has taken effect. (unless you already had a massive sum of HP and the 20% sac was >200. Which is highly unlikely unless you're using Symbiosis.)
Another suggestion for blood users out there: Blood Renewal OR some other form of reliable self heal. Vampiric skills will get you far, but when there's no targets around, you want to be able to heal yourself if, for instance, your opponent poisoned you or left a horrid degenerative curse on you. My last piece of advice is to USE your secondary. Necromancers are great and can stand alone without a secondary, but if you have a secondary, chances are there's a great synergy you can use somewhere in there.

Curses:
The problem with Curses is, it's indirect and has to be played as such. When playing as a curses necromancer, you have to remember that you are the most vulnerable of all forms of Necromancer. Parasitic Bond and Insidious Parasite are the two most reliable forms of self-healing within Curses, BUT I would encourage curse users to look at the many synergies between Blood and Curses skills. The mix of Blood magic to your bar can be a huge help when it comes to defending yourself. Also, as before, USE your secondary.

Death:
Death Magic is sterotypically a Minion Master. The problem I see in a lot of MM's is, they lack self-healing AND they use slow recharge minons (because they are more powerful.) Always bring a fast minion spell such as Bone Fiend or Bone Horror; this helps with Corpse Control and helps keep a wall of minons between you and your enemy. Don't bring more than 2 minion spells + a flesh golem; if you bring a fast minon spell and a slow minion spell, one will always be recharged by the time a corpse hits the ground and there's no reason to bring a wide array of minons. Bring a self heal; I prefer a Monk Secondary with Heal Area for this. USE your secondary if you have it.
On the other side of the coin, OFFENSIVE Death magic users can be extremely powerful. They lack the life-stealing of Blood Magic or Curses, but they DO have corpse-exploiting spells that heal them, such as Consume Corpse. Never bring more than 2 corpse exploiting skills (unless you're a minion master, 2 minions +fleshy) because you can't count on there being enough corpses on the ground to use them. Death Nova is an intersting skill because it can be used in a self-defensive manner; sometimes players will stop attacking you for fear of triggering the nova on themselves in PvP, and in PvE monsters will behave the same way. You can also use Death Nova to turn Minions or other players into "bombs."

Just a short note on Soul Reaping:
A necromancer uses Soul Reaping as their primary form of energy management. I use 9+1 SR, but a necromancer can get along easily with less than that. Signet of Lost Souls can be an excellent supplement to your energy and health, but it's not a reliable self-heal.

Just a little opinion and advice. You don't have to take it.

Demonic Flesh is bad.

why is demonic flesh bad?, apart from sac skills...

Shadow of fear, reckless haste, enfeebling blood etc. are the PvE defense curses skills. I don't know where this insidious parasite junk is coming from, its only good on bosses which are usually 3% of PvE.

Outside of orders, bip, and wells, blood is really awful, as is blood nuking.

Enfeebling blood = ultimate defense. But seriously, why do you need so much defense unless you want to tank with the warriors as a necro?

Well, I find a curse necro useful for shutdown in hard mode or vs shiro, but only there.

[skill]Blood Renewal[/skill][skill]Restful Breeze[/skill]

Those are one of my fav healing skills on my nec. I only use those in low-end pvp since selfhealing isnt needed in pve =p I use Blood renewal when messin around with some blood build, and Restful when I'm using somethin else besides blood. When trying to stay alive, armor bonuses (Tormentor's is nice) and shields with armor against certain damage types come in handy, especially against fire/air eles.

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Some 2ndary skills that I can think of:

[skill]Restful Breeze[/skill][skill]Mending Touch[/skill][skill]Shield Bash[/skill][skill]Remedy Signet[/skill][skill]Shroud of Distress[/skill][skill]Hex Breaker[/skill][skill]Mystic Regeneration[/skill]

Extra hit points are excellent for casters; they're the primary targets in PvP and PvE. Being able to absorb more damage can be crucial to your survival; it's not because you're tanking, it's because you might be spiked. Just because it's an enchantment doesn't mean it's automatically useless. If you use the Enchantment Removal>X argument you're cutting out a HUGE chunk of the game. Demonic Flesh has been an important aspect of my build in order to get through many Hard Mode areas simply because of the DP.

"Blood Nuking" isn't really an adequate decription of blood magic's usage. It's generally focused on a single target; there are exceptions, but they're very energy inefficient and generally don't work well enough to be worth it. AoE blood magic isn't preferential over individual targets and spamming spells onto multiple opponents.

On the use of offensive spells in defensive manners... I have nothing against it, in fact I practice the use of them. They're just not as direct as a self-heal or a defensive enchantment/stance/shout/etc. and I don't recommend them exclusively as defensive measures. Hex Removal and Condition Removal are among the highest priorities for classes capable of it.

I didn't mention a whole lot of different secondaries because there are an awful lot of possibilities, don't you think? Personally I don't advocate a N/W for DEFENSIVE purposes; as a caster that usually implies being a lower AL target on the front lines. N/A's on the other hand, can defend themselves excellently with enchantments or stances WITHOUT having to be on the front lines, because other assassin skills can easily compliment your offensive arsenal.

[skill]Disciplined Stance[/skill] requires you to be on the frontlines?

Demonic Flesh is like endure pain except it's easier to remove, so if it ever gets shattered or runs out while you get attacked, your health is probably going to run into the negatives.

Endure Pain is not an OPTION for a Necromancer because it is Strength linked.

Demonic Flesh runs the risk of Enchantment Removal just like any other enchantment. I honestly haven't had this problem very much and I PvP regularly. So I have 500 HP, I sac 20%, (100 hp) and I'm at 700 max but gained 100 hp (600/700) since Demonic Flesh adds 200. Shatter Enchantment deals around 100 damage, so EVEN IF Demonic Flesh was shattered I've lost hardly anything.

Disciplined Stance. Am I really going to invest 9-12 points into Tactics for 1-6 seconds of partial protection? Which can be removed just as easily with Wild Blow as Demonic Flesh can be with Shatter Enchantment?

I never said to run Endure Pain on a necromancer, that's just retarded.

Warriors with wild blow fail. Most assassins are just SP builds.

Demonic Flesh is just extra health, given it's long recharge if it's removed prematurely it's a useless skill slot for a long while.

I'd feel safer running stances or feigned neutrality over demonic flesh.

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AOTT, you should have read more this forum before posting. While you obviously want to give to newbs some advices, you give them erh... newb advices.
Demonic flesh sucks. Hard.
Curse necros fragile? How dare you say that? They have shutdown. And shutdown is exactly DAMAGE PREVENTING. When you put enfeebling blood on a bunch of warriors, then Insidious parasite, they hit you for less than you life steal from them. Reckless haste + price of failure is deadly too. Parasitic bound is quite a nice self heal, as you use it to cover your hexes, so it's the first to be removed, so its healing potential is in fact quite often triggered in PvP.
Minion masters stopping to raise minions and use corpses for life? uh?
Minion masters have quite some defensive options. First, taste of death-Death nova combo to heal themselves. Second, the two allmighty skills Dark Bond (blood magic-you don't need much in blood to make this interesting) and transfer conditions. These skills make you invincible-as long you have minions and they are not stripped. They also have the good options that if you die under it, that means no more of your minions are alive, so you don't let your party with hostile minions as a burden in addition of your death.

PS: Turbobusa for the disciplined stance thing.... You shouldn't take it as an example to break sins combo, as most sins are SP sins, and they carry Expose defenses, which nullify any block skill.

I find that when playing MM [skill]dark bond[/skill] and [skill]mystic regeneration[/skill] is all the healing I need

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The reason I wasn't impressed with the Shatter Enchantment>Demonic FLesh argument was because my experience with demonic flesh has been that it doesn't work the same as Endure Pain: when you use Endure Pain it gives you temporary hit points which you lose when it ends. When you use Deominc Flesh you gain in the cap to your health, when it is removed it only reduces your cap back to where it originally was. So say it was a drain enchantment and you were at 500/700, you're back at 500/500. That's what's happened to me. I'm using it as an example because it's worked lovely for me for 2 years. I don't consider it "noob" advice. That's my opinion; you don't have to agree.

Yes, Dark Bond is a great defensive skill for MM's. So is infuse condition. I never said they weren't. A lot of MM's I see lack any method of self-healing which is why I mentioned it. Damage reduction is great and all but your HP aren't going to regenerate themselves as long as you're still taking damage.

And yes; I really DO think Curse Necromancers are fragile. Perhaps that's because I'm almost always foiled by a caster when I play one. Curse necromancers are strongest against melee and ranged opponents; the snag comes in whenever I have to fight a caster which is why I recommend some other form of self-sustenence. The only caster that's going to WAND you to death is a Conjure (insert element here) wand spiker and you just don't see that all that often now do you?

I was under the impression that bringing a shield without meeting the req. resulted in not getting the armor bonus from it. You'll get the secondary mods, but not the 16 AL.

What's with the emphasis on warriors and assassins here anyway? This is a necromancer thread. I was trying to mention Necromancer options primarily.

Necromancers lack defense, apart from some aforementioned skills, hence why we suggest using your secondary for defence, with options that are farm ore solid than Demonic Flesh.

Also, if you don't meet the req you get half the bonus, shield swapping is very effective example, wielding a shield with 16 armour when with an inscription with +10 vs. X

You are gaining an additional 18 armour against that source without meeting it's requirement.

MM's using vamp horror's don't need self heals, that's what the horror's are for... and it's hard to take any advise given by someone who ecurages the use of fleshy in MM build as knowledgible. [skill]order of undeath[/skill] > [skill]animate flesh golem[/skill] - on so many levels.