my little necro guide

i've been a necromancer for 4 months now (since i bought the game), and i think its the most versatile character there is. i wrote down the builds that currently come to mind.
note, i dont know everything about the necromancer, and you can always make new builds and combinations, this guide can help new necros that want to know what they are going into...

so lets start, i'll try to keep it organized:

pure necro: if you want to be a pure necromancer, without using your secondary proffesion, then your options are endless.

support necro:
if you want to be a support necromancer, the main character you are supporting, is the monk.
- the necro is filled with anti-warrior skills (faitheartedness-bad spelling, enfeebling blood, shadow of fear, price of failure, weaken armor...), which can hurt a warrior badly, reducing his damage, attack speed and chances of hitting the monk. the monk is plagued by warriors alot, and with this tactic, you can help make the monk more effective.
- and we should never forget the two spells that make the necro a super monk helper - blood ritual and blood is power. both these spells regenerate energie at a large speed, and can give the monk twice the healing/protecting time before he runs out of energie. the problem is - these skills sacrifice health, and leave the necro volnurable. the necro shouldnt help more than two spellcasters at a time or he might get is health too low, and become a target for the enemie.
- another great support elite skill, is tainted flesh (also great against warriors). this spell makes an ally immune to desease, and each time he is attacked phisically, the attacked becomes deseased. this spell costs 5 energie, and has an incredible recharge time. the necro can cause warriors to be deseased very easilly this way, and combined with fragility (mesmer skill), it can be rather deadly.
- another way to support your buddies in battle, is by using wells. there are 4 wells in the game: well of blood, well of the profane, well of suffering and the well of power. if you are using wells, the well of suffering is pretty useless in pvp, and pve doesn't benefit too much from it. well of blood is good at certain locations, if a corpse is near allied spell casters, or a guild lord (to heal the warriors). well of power is extremely effective - it heals just like well of blood, and even adds 2 energy regeneration arrow thingies for spellcasters (and the range is greater if im not mistaken). but there is one well that takes the cake - well of the profane. it may cost 25 energy, and it may require 4 minimum death magic for effectiveness, but the effect of it is incredible: it removes all enchantements from enemies, and maked new ones impossible to cast on characters within the well. there are areas in the game when you need to kill a ghostly hero, or the guild lord, and they are spammed with enchantements to make them almost undamagable. once this spell is cast, all those enchantememnts become a thing of the past. this is also effective when trying to defeat a protection monk (although rend enchantements is more effective at that).

offensive necro:
if you wish to ba an agressive necro, you should probably choose a certain character to be aggressive against.
- a necro can weaken a warrior badly with a huge assortement of skills, but if you are the only one fighting the warrior, you need price of failure, weaken armor, enfeebling blood and faitheartedness (you will be a curse necro mainly). this cmbanation will cause the warrior to attack much slower, miss on ocasions (causing himself minor damage), be weakened (66% less damage) and be damaged almost like a normal character. after doing this, you can attack him with any damaging skill you choose to (deathly swarm, vampiric gaze/touch...), or take him out by spamming health degen skills (parasitic bond, suffering, life transfer, faitheartedness...). all this will shut down the warrior, but you will be damaged... after you kill the warrior (hopefully), you should use soul fiest to quickly get ready for ther next one. i strongly recommend using soul barbs before you spam hexes, to damage the warrior greatly.
- you should use using rend enchantements/strip enchantement, to stop monk enchantements like mending, used by W/Mo.
- a necro is also a strong monk killer (very good when combined with the mesmer proffesion). the good thing about being a necro-monk killer, is that the enemie wont attack you immidiately, like they do to a mesmer. you have more time to attack the monk, before they attack you. notice - this strategy works against other spell casters too, but with a few changes. when attacking a monk, you have the best way of hitting his energy (even better that a mesmer imo). you should use soul barbs for this tactic to be even more effective. the main thing is to take skills like mark of subversion, malaise, rend enchantements/strip enchantement, soul leach/wither/lingering curse. when taking soul leach (a weaker backfire), you should take defile flesh aswell, so that when the monk heals himself, he is still being damaged. when taking wither, you should combine it with malaise to make a 4 energy degeneration, and take defile flesh, just in case (with monk enchantements, this means the monk will have a constant energy degeneration). and when taking lingering curse, dont take defile flesh, but try to get others to ttack the monk aswell. obviously, whatever elite you choose, you need to bring damaging spells too (deathly swarm, vampiric gaze/touch...), and maybe weaken armor, to damage him alot (more that what each skill says).
- one last thing, there is an option to team up with a mesmer or a warrior, to cause the enemie a condition, and then use virulence. this way the enemie will suffer from three conditions, at least two causing severe health degen (more on this later).

the minion master:
this character is the easiest to relate to as a necro, and alot of people think this is all the necromancer has to offer. this, of course, is not true, but a good minion master can make a huge, insane, powerfull and frightening army (you really dont know what to do when there are dozens of fiends ahead of you...).
a good minion master though, will take all of your skill slots to implement.
you should take these spells, always: create bone fiend, create bone minions, vereta's sacrifice, blood of the master, vereta's aura.
you should take two kinds of summoning skills, to vary your army, and make it harder for you enemies to attack the fiends. vereta's sacrifice and blood of the master are crucial to keeping your minions alive, giving them health regen and health boosts (you didnt think just summoning them is enough did you? there is alot of maintainence and micro-managing involved in this). vereta's aura is there incase you die, or incase another necro steals all of your minions.
there are alot of optional spells, to really impower your army:
death nova + lick of death. these combined can heal you ALOT, and cause your enemies to be poisoned and damaged (unblockable damage).
infuse condition. if you wish to be protected against conditions, you can use this to transfer the next one given to you, to your closest minion.
dark bond. this is a blood spell, which should be used with 4 blood magic points (3+minor rune). you will recieve 75% less damage, and thast damage will be transferred to your closest minion.
the minion master needs as many death attribute points as possible (16 if possible), and 13 soul reaping (12+minor rune). this way, you will raise super-powerfull minions, and get a huge amount of energy just at the right time to create a new minion (you can also see when a character dies by watching your energy meter).

aura of the leach build:
this build has been floating around recently, and the main thing is this:
aura of the leach makes you have half the hp, and take half the damage. this might make you think of the 55 hp monk build, which uses protective spirit to reduce damage, and health regen to make the small amount of damage that was given, dissapear.
its similar here - you use blood renewal + life siphon for health regen and aura of the leach for the small hp amount, and you can survive a long amount of time, spreading damage/curses...
you can also use dark aura, as shown in a reply to this post...

necro/warrior:
this character can be a very effective warrior replacement, having a strong melee weapon at hand, and alot of energy/energy regeneration for necro skills. in this character, you can use your melee weapon, and different touch skills (vampiric touch, vile touch, feast of corruption, unholy feast...) to steal health from your enemies. you can also use soul fiest to heal yourself once a person dies. it is possible to use tainted flesh on yourself too, to make your enemies deseased. in addition, you can use skills like life transfer and life siphon, to give yourself health regeneration. this character has issues though... the main one being the low armor for a tanker. you will, by all means, die faster than any warrior. so you need to be able to use health gain skills at the right time (not at the start of a battle, but when you are damaged). also, you can take skils like plague signet, to send conditions like "crippled", right back at your enemies, curing you of slow movement, and health degeneration.
note, you can also make this a W/N, but with certain changes.

necro/ranger:
i personally do not see much use for this combination. sure, you can use those awesome stances, but you can use them with the warrior too. sure, you can have a strong pet, but to have any use for a pet, you need at least two skill slots, and that isnt worth it, imo.
still, if you think a great combination (worth using in a team), then prove me wrong, i wont mind learning new things.

necro/monk:
lets start like this, i dont think a N/Mo should be used for neither healing nor protecting. that is because you will lose the runes/head tattoos and the divine favour abillity.
so what's left??? thats right! smiting!
i dont think that many smiting skils will be effective for this build, but there are a few to make the anti-monk build just that much sweeter.
you should take balthasar's aura, dont get me wrong, but dont focus on it... use it at the beggining of the battle on a warrior if you want (remmember the energy cost), and then move to the more usefull skills for you.
one of them is "smite hex". we all hate backfire... and this deals with it (and other hexes), while dealing unblockable damage to the warriors attacking you.
the other is perfect for you, the monk slayer - scourge healing. by combining the effectivenedd of defile flesh/lingering curse, with scourge healing, you can make the average monk who is trying to heal himself, cause himself alot of damage instead (much less healng + alot of damage).

necro/elementalist:
this was my first character, and still is. i was pretty clueless back then, now i see i could have made a much better choice... but this build can still be used. i used to play with 3 necro skills (damaging ones), and the rest either fire, air, or earth skills. it worked until i found my self with 0 energy, and full exhaustion. with the necro, you have aproximately 40 energy and 4 regeneration. with the elementalist, you have twice. i learned pretty quickly, that such an arrangement cannot work (an E/N can work though, so dont give up on that. air combined with unblockable shadow damage can be great for ignoring a warrior's armor).
but there is a way to make this work! did you know that water magic mainly consister of hexes? did you also know, that only 2 skills in the entire water school caused exhaustion (maelstorm and mind freaze)? well, imagine each of the water hexes (deep freaze, ice spikes, frozen burst...), delivering an additional 28 damage points. that is called soul barbs, my friends, and it rocks. you can cast soul barbs on your enemie, then a few health degen hexes, then finishing him off with damaging water spells, causing a ridiculous amount of damage AND slowing your enemie down, by alot. that can be affective. i would also like to add, that most enemies dont put cold protection on their armor/weapons, because you rarely see that kind damage in battles.
i will say this again, you can use the necro with other elementalist schools of magic, but you would just be better of making it an E/N.

necro/mesmer:
in my own, humble opinion, this is the best necro secondary proffesion that exists, ever, in the history of man, dinozaurs and single-celled organizms.
here, you can have the most amount of variety, as to how and who you kill.

spell caster slayer:
you remmember the monk slayer necro? this is better! even in this sub-category we have variety!
you remmember using wither and malaise to kill the monk's energy regen? now you can take chuncks of the energy that is barely left, and interrupt the monk's spells (energy burn, power leak, shame, signet of weariness...). you can also use skills like arcane connondrum, to slow the spells down and make them shout out to be interrupted.
imagine, and this is funny, using wither, malaise AND ether lord!!! the enemie spell caster will pee his pants watching his energy go down as if he was "bleeding" on his energy bar!!!
now, think of using both backfire AND soul leach at your enemie... two spells and he dies!

warrior ass-puncher:
once again, do you remmember the warrior killer/pure necro? now imagine taking skills like ethereal burden and soothing images, to take out his adrenaline and slow him down.
in addition, you can combine price of failure with spirit of failure, making the warrior have a 43.75% chance of missing, taking damage and giving you energy (im in 11th grade, we aren't learning these calculations yet, so it took me a while...).
you can also use stances like phisical ressistance, to completely embarass the warrior attacking you (with him weakened, missin half the time, and barely damaging you when he does hit, he should be embarrased...).
you can choose your elites here, from a huge veriaty, but i reccoment either inneptitude (blinding and damaging once), or combining spitefull spirit with empathy (each of his attacks deal aproximately 50 damage to the warrior, even if he misses the attack).

fragility mesmer:
you all know 'em, you all hate 'em, but how in God's name do they do it? you can do it in several ways, but here is the main idea:
you cast fragility at you chosen opponent (armor means nothing here, so i dont wanna see any discrimination), and now you inflict a condition at him, that isnt desease or poison. how? there are 2 good ways imo, that i use alot:
1. use phantom pain. then use shatter delusions (the amount of domination doesnt matter, we arent going for the damage, but the deep wound), you're enemie is now suffering from a deep wound for 17 sec aproximately.
2. use signet of agony - you are bleeding. now use plague sending (note, you have sacrificed 20% health). you're enemie is now bleeding.
after that, use the all important virulence, to make your enemie both poisoned and deseased.
at this position, your enemie either has a deep wound + severe health degen, or really severe health degen (your choice).
but haven't we forgot something? why, yes we have! the fragility... besides from the massive health degeneration, you have also damaged your enemy by aproximately 120 unblockable damage.
chances are, he is either dead right now, or close to dying. if he is close to dying, be glad! you have just enough time to use apidemic on him, transferring all those conditions to his friends.
note - this process may seem long, but it takes about 6 seconds, and if you are a Me/N (and i suggest that for a fragility build), it only takes 3-4 seconds (fast casting should not be disrespected...).


FoC necro:
here you focus on the skill "feast of corruption", to cause huge amounts of damage, heal yourself and also add a hex or two on your enemie. very good when a few necros are combined. i'll give the build i usually use:
parasitic bond
FoC
arcane echo
desecrate enchantements
rend enchantements
vampiric gaze
awaken the blood
res sig
the idea is to use awaken, hex your enemy, arcane echo and double cast FoC. you have desecrate and gaze for damage between FoC charges and rend to still be able to hurt those earth ele and prot spirit guys...

i think thats all folks! im very tired and chronically bored right now... i have just been writing for 2.5 hours straight, just for you ungratefll bastards (joking ofcourse).

i hope you enjoyed my little guide, and that you learned how powerfull a necro can be (people dont think of him as a good character at all, its simply terrible! he is by all means the best support character out there, and can compliment almost any proffesion).

all right reserved to ME (always wanted to say that, even though i dont know what it means...) if you want to post this guide anywhere (besides this site) email me at [email protected], i'll let you post it...

if you want to congratulate my flawless grammer and skillfull writing, and tell me what a wonderfull future i have in writing stuff, you are more than welcome.

once again, i hope you enjoyed my guide. there is no easy way to find what you want here, because i just felt like writing what i know, and didnt plan anything.

i wont be updating this guide grammatically, or anything like that, but if the necromancer class improves with new skills and the likes, i'll be sure to add new content into this guide.

P.S.
i want to speak of the minion strategy here:
this is mainly used for TOPK battles, but can be used in gvg battles too. the point is to make an insane amount of minions, even before the battle has started (at the countdown timer at the start).
you use 2 minion masters, 2 sacrificers, 2 Me/Mo and 2 monks for specific healing and drawing the fire away from the others.
the 8 players are divided into three teams:
team #1 is made up of 1 sacrificer, 1 minion master and one Me/Mo.
team #2 is the same as team #1.
team #3 is made up of the two remaining monks.
how does the technique go?
the sacrificers (this is a necro who takes blood is power and equips a vampiric weapon) in teams 1 and 2 kill themselves by using blood is power 3 times. then the corresponding minion masters will create either bone minions or a bone fiend. immidiately when the sacrificers die, the corresponding Me/Mo (with as much to fast casting as possible) use a res spell that ressurectes the sacrificers with the LEAST amount of health possible, but not rebirth. RINSE AND REPEAT BEFORE AND DURING THE BATLE.
during the battle, the two monks will heal the minion masters and eachother, using protective spells on themselves to survive as much as possible. this way, you will engage the enemy in TOPK with over 50 different kinds of minions (there is almost a minute of waiting time before a battle there).
REMMEMBER TO KEEP THE MINION MASTERS ALIVE AND THE SACRIFICERS DEAD, NOT THE OTHER WAY AROUND. if a minion master dies, he must be IMMIDIATELY ressed, and he must IMMIDIATELY use vereta's aura (make sure his health is above 33%).

i have also made this build possible for a 3 character farm session:
1 sacrificer.
1 minion master.
1 monk (Me/Mo if you cant wait a long time between ressurections).

just like the normal strategy, only smaller. when farming, just take your time and create an army. when you think its enough, go and farm. if ever you need more minions, just make more! the monk (or Me/Mo) will both res and heal the minion master. in here, mind you, the sacrificer can fight if he wants, because there is no urgency to make new minions right then and there.

it's been fun, and i hope you weren't too bored with my loooooooonnnnnnnnnggggggggggg, over 3000 words guide. im off to bed.