My buddy plays a Necro, and we are wondering how they will work for PvP. Mainly, will he have corpses to animate or will he want to reallocate his points to curses etc.?
Corpse exploitation spells are usually never the way to go. And if they are, they should be a utility thing that you could live without.
Curses, [skill]Spiteful Spirit[/skill] in particular are the way to go for a necro.
Also, a good idea might be to switch to mesmer (if he hasn't ascended yet, he will be able to eventually. no need to reroll) for some more hexes that can compliment necro ones quite nicely.
Necros in PvP aside from what has already been suggested they also make good anti-melee characters.
I got my R2 glad playing an anti-melee necro or a WoH monk.
So he is a N/W brings back memories of a epic thread about a N/W ripost build a guy was trying to promote as a good necro PvP build. You should find it, it is quite funny.
If he is serious about playing PvP though he should probably create a PvP character that way he can easily change equipment and make use of all unlocked skills on the account. Up to him though
Necros in organized PvP are only used in gimmick builds, mostly hex pressure with curses, blood magic spikes, and as N/Rt healers. They will almost never appear in balanced builds. Air elementalists do a better job shutting down melee characters and mesmers do a better job shutting down casters.
In unorganized PvP like RA/AB a toxic chill necro does pretty well to spike down targets.
Necro's in PvP? No good.
Every class has but two things that set it apart: (1) its primary attribute, and (2) its runes.
Soul Reaping sucks hardcore in PvP since deaths are infrequent (and all the gimmicks that allowed you to "manufacture" deaths (through spirits or JB minion cycling) have been nerfed to death) and the linked skills are not very great at all.
Runes are pretty much irrelevant since everyone runs minors in serious PvP these days.
That leaves you with no real reason not to use an E/N or Me/N instead of a N/X.