Necromancer

“

The great thing about minions is that they never last long enough to work up a horrid stench.

— GuildWars2.com Necromancer

Necromancers are masters of the dark arts. They summon the dead to fight for them, channel blood energy and rend their enemies' souls. Necromancers draw on life force and use it to strengthen or heal themselves and others. As a scholar profession, necromancers wear light armor.

Abilities

Necromancers gain life force when enemies and allies die near them, and can use that life force to go into the Death Shroud. This drains life force slowly but gives access to an alternate set of multi-purpose skills which can be used to deal heavy damage, control enemies, or to provide support for the necromancer and his or her allies.

Necromancers have more health than other scholars; they can not only extend that health through the use of the Death Shroud, but they also possess wide variety of life stealing abilities, leading to a profession that can be very hard to put down. The necromancer is also great at inflicting debilitating or damaging conditions on enemies as well as removing conditions from allies and boons from enemies.

Necromancers also prominently make use of fear — a removable condition that forces the enemy to flee directly away from the caster for a short period of time.

Skills

See list of necromancer skills.

Special skill types

• Marks — Marks are ground-targeted spells that produce a variety of effects for allies and/or foes. A mark is placed at a location and will trigger after a foe steps on it.
• Minions — The necromancer summons undead minions to attack foes and do his/her bidding. Every minion-summoning spell has an associated sequence skill that appears after the minion has been summoned. These additional skills range from consuming the minion to gain health to making them charge at foes to knock them over.
• Wells — Wells are persistent area effects placed at the necromancer's feet that allow them to affect foes or allies within the location of the well.
• Spectral — Spectral skills are exclusive to necromancers, involving the use of otherworldly spectral energy.

Traits

Necromancers have five trait lines:

• Spite increases  Power and  Condition Duration, and has traits which increase damage or trigger at certain health threshold, and increase effectiveness of the axe and signets.
• Curses increases  Precision and  Condition Damage, and has many traits affect conditions, and benefit use of scepter and warhorn
• Death Magic increases  Toughness and  Boon Duration, and especially focuses on summoning and use of minions.
• Blood Magic increases  Vitality and  Healing Power, and distinctively increases effectiveness of life stealing skills and healing of allies.
• Soul Reaping increases  Critical Damage and Life Force Pool, allowing the necromancer to stay in Death Shroud longer, and possesses traits which enhance Death Shroud or allow applying of Fear.

See list of necromancer traits.

See Necromancer bug compilation.

Equipment

Armor

The necromancer is a scholar profession and uses light armor.

Weapons

• Two-handed
  • Staff — Long range spellcasting weapon which emphasizes AoE support via use of marks.

• Main-hand
  • Scepter — Inflict various conditions on foes at a long range.
  • Axe — Use powerful attacks to tear enemies at medium range.
  • Dagger — Steal an enemy's health or life force at close range.

• Off-hand
  • Focus — Make the enemy vulnerable or chill them, while removing boons.
  • Warhorn — Summon a swarm of locusts or daze enemies with the wail of the horn.
  • Dagger — Weaken foes or transfer conditions to them.

• Aquatic
  • Spear — Reap enemies with close range attacks or terrorize them by summoning vampiric shrimp.
  • Trident — Thwart the enemy with offensive support and sink them into the abyss.

There are ten possible weapon sets for this profession and two weapon sets while underwater. The necromancer can equip and alternate between two weapon sets during combat.

Crafting

The following crafting disciplines can create items that are useful to the necromancer:

• Weaponsmith — Axes, daggers, spears.
• Huntsman — Warhorns.
• Artificer — Focus, scepters, staves, tridents.
• Tailor — Light armor.
• Jeweler — Jewelry.
• Chef — Food.

Personal story

In the biography step of character creation, necromancers must decide what they would mark their face with - Mark of the Wraith, Skull or Trickster Demon - in acknowledgement of having death as their closest companion.

Gallery

• 
• 
• 
• 
• 

Trivia

• The necromancer was previewed under this image until its unveiling on the 25th August 2010.
• The necromancer was first revealed at the Gamescom 2010 demo, and was unveiled on the official website on Wednesday, August 25.
• The unique mechanic of the necromancer was originally based around collecting souls from enemies and using them to summon minions.

External links

• Necromancer on the official website.

References

The Guild Wars Wiki has an article on Necromancer.

---

Professions

Soldiers	Guardian	Warrior
Adventurers	Engineer	Ranger	Thief
Scholars	Elementalist	Mesmer	Necromancer