Tutompop

Ok, lets start with the negative things you've been hearing.

First off, this is due mostly to misconception and the kewl dewds running around with 6 corpse spells on their hotbar all of which don't do anything without a body and when you only have one body you only use one skill at any given time. In addition, it is incredibly difficult to control your minions as they have their own ai that tends to make them run off and attack the closest mob, like having henchies but without the skills. True they're expendable but sometimes your group doesn't WANT to attack a certain group of mobs. If you're trying to heal your mobs it is difficult to tell which ones need healing or need a death nova to do damage as there is no way other than clicking on the minion to find out. Imagine a healer monk with no party bar to watch and you have an idea of the situation.

Second, the "major damage" you're thinking off doesn't exist. Most spells unless coupled with a second spell that shares a synergy of some kind do crap damage or at best the same amount of damage you just did to yourself to damage another mob. Elementalists are far greater damage dealers than necros AND they have aoe. However, this is what the group sees. What they do NOT see and frustrates me to no end is our curses and blood magic spells that boost our party and debuff the enemy. A necro is to melee what a mesmer is to casters. My first character was a necromancer and we are severly underappreciated. So I made a monk, if there is a necro in my group who knows what hes doing I see the damage reduction and the reduced frequency that I need to heal. However, everybody thinks its the monk doing it or that their character is just that good. God help that poor elementalist if he thinks the mob that would be normally hitting him for 100+ is hitting him for 30 damage because it has been enfeebled(weakened) makes him a good tank. Add to that we must find the correct target for spells like mark of pain when nobody calls out targets or land that critical aoe curse or well of power. The sad fact is nobody knows what we can do but the players using the necro and sometimes not even then.

P.S. No you can not kill yourself using sacrificial spells, you will always have 1 health provided that the only damage you're taking is from self sacrfice spells. Of course a light breeze in this game can take you out at that point.

The Destroyer

Good question! I have been in parties with really effective necros that use the dead bodies to great advantage and I've been in parties where the necro tries to be a warrior tank and that doesnt seem to work very well for them....... I can say I have seen a necro use so many sacrifice skills that they were so low on health they died when the next ranged attacker hit them 1 time...

Padre

necro/warriors can be pretty scary in melee if done right.

Chev of Hardass

My necromancer is purely a support character.

Most players are hell bent on dealing direct damage, that is an ignorant approach, I think.

Blood Ritual, Order of Pain, Blood is Power, Weaken Armor, and Suffering, are your most powerful team spells.

I use Life Transfer, Vampiric Gaze, and Shadow Strike to help kill and keep my health up.

I generally cast life siphon on a random character to help with the sacrifice spells as well, but if you cast that on a dying character you end up wasting those extra seconds after when it died.

I think, along with Ranger, Necromancer is one of the hardest characters to play well.

As much as I would love to describe my entire build, and brag about how I do it, I have not done much except for amaze people in PvE. If I ever make a name for myself as a PvPer, maybe then.

I used to advertise myself as Monk Protection at the tombs, because that is what I am, but too many people saw Protection Monk. Boy they were pissed when N/Ele or Ele/N showed up.

Jackathan

you can commit suicide, yes.

Yojinj

Necromancer has many different approaches.

In PVP go curses, your team will love you for it because there are so many nice ones. Several target more then one enemy. It is my experience that my pvp necro is almost as much of a target like a monk ^^.

In PVE you can travel around alot without henchies (at least in regions that give you corpses). With Horror and Fiends or Minions in your skillbar and Blood of Master you cna keep yer babys alive, stay behind and support your lil buddies with bloo spells.

Right now my N/Mo build is 80% smiting and i love it ^^. With Smiting max, some death and soul reaping my char is quite a killer. Soul reaping maxes sure you don't run out of energy, with right items the smite skill recharge fast. The best part is that no one expects you to be a healer (like a monk) so you can smite s much as you want to.

The greatest problem i got with my N/mo main char is farming. I never had more then 8.000 gold on my char. but i must admit i hate farming..

Teufel Eldritch

Personally IMO Necro Primary is not worth it. Soul Reaping to me just isnt that great.. A Monk with Necro secondary is far more effective.... again IMO.

Ensign

Necromancer is a pretty marginal class. Not terrible, mind you, but marginal.

In PvE the Necromancer is pretty solid, through sheer force of minions. Once you get that army going it's hard to stop, and a pack of level 18 minions makes for a good meatshield in addition to the damage they deal. Mix in some utility and you have a solid profession.

In PvP the Necromancer is a good deal more narrow - it isn't really a character with a role, instead being a class brought along for specific purposes. The majority of the time that purpose is enchantment removal. The problem with the Necromancer is that you don't need a lot of skills and/or attributes to handle his support roles, and his main, attribute intensive line - death - has issues in an environment where there aren't a ton of corpses, nor the opportunity to run one fight's dead into the next. It isn't a useless class, but it's easily the most marginal. Run one if you have a specific purpose in mind, otherwise don't bother.

Peace,
-CxE

__________________
Don't argue with idiots. They bring you to their level and beat you with experience.

Jackell

I tried so hard when the game went retail trying to create a really good PvP necro. Tried all sorts of combinations and classes, and all it got me was a few tricks and a lot of angry pvp groups. I could help kill targets pretty good, but overall, my pvp was lacking. I will eventually give it another try when I have more ideas, but for now, yeah.

In PvE, my minions are a godsend. It's not too hard to keep track of your minions, and if one dies, oh well, there's a new corpse for you to create more.

goldfinger

I think an ele/necro is better than a necro primary (unless you don't get elite skills with your secondary) just because of energy storage. Personally I think you can do real well with a necro. You can do a couple of things really. First off, you can support through a means of curses. You can get behind a charecter and target who they target, laying down a line that either renders the target useless, cutting off all means of damage, or simply making them incredibly easy to kill, or even buffing up the person attacking with whatever blood spells. If you are looking to do damage the best way to do it is through dot curses, because they usually end up healing you or debuffing your opponent in some way on top of the damage.

Studio Ghibli

I <3 my primary necro in PVP.

Especially in tombs.

Curses and blood magic for the win.

LaMort

Well of Power is also a great support skill. With the +5 Health and +2 Energy regen. It can help the tanks out at the front (and lessen the workload on the healer monks), or help the casters energy recharge fast, allowing them to keep dishing out their casts (again along with helping the Monks keep their energy up there).

With a few enchantments and buffs a good N/Mo can push their health past 800 too.

The main draw back I see with Necros is that having too many in one group makes them less effective, as they are all fighting over to use the sometimes rare corpses. Though a good minion Necro and blood/curse Necro can work well together, if co-ordinated.

Draken

Ill speak to the necromancer in pvp. Their are a couple skills that make necro's actually pretty sweet for pvp lingering curse, tainted flesh, blood is power, putrid explosion and rend enchantments are all very usefull granted the first 3 are elite. i have killed two teams at the same time with putrid explosion the chain reactions can be quite amazing. Tainted flesh keeps you pretty busy and is really anoying for the other team although you may need to use rotting flesh in concert with it incase you run up against a caster only team. lingering curse is great for disenchanting combined with the more energy efficent rend and you will keep the target from getting any enchantments.

some other notable skills are chiblands which screws over lifebond teams and is decent in its own right, well of profain which scews anyone over who sits in it and rigor mortis which is great for melee heavy teams.

ill also leave you with this picture which is of a group i was in that was necro heavy people would say "oh its a nerfed team they have so many necros" well when they realised what we were doing they changed their mind .



who said minions sucked in pvp?? muhaha. we got quadruple teamed with this group we didnt survive but we put up a damn good fight .

btw this isnt an exploit we got confirmation they may change it so its not as effective and of course it has many counters so don't whine about it. we actually lost as much as we won.

edit: i should add that yes alot of times necro can be religated to a 2ndary its often arbitrary wether or not a someone is a necro primary. The biggest reason is so you can have a superior rune.

King of Fools

the main problem with necro primary is that soul reaping is a lame primary attribute for pvp. somebody has to die before you get any benefit from it. this is particularly rough in Arena and Tombs since their are no easy npc kills. Not as bad, in GvG since their are plenty of NPC.

So, when you make a necro character you will find that El/Ne is almost always better than Ne/El for pvp. Same with monk and mesmer. Effective pvp characters can be made with Ne/Ra and Ne/Wa profressions.

for PvE, most necro primary are fantastic to have in a group.

Ollj

Necros blow Warriors and Monks to bits because they have no good defenses against necro atacks.

Yojinj

Necro is one of the few classes that need extreme different skills/attribute in pve and pvp.

A curse blood necro is more effective in pvp then pve. Death blood necro better for pve. I won't start with secondary now. I'm at the fire island chain in pve now and i'm 75% smite 25& death and its a super combo.

And i agree that soul reaping has not much value in pvp and is most important in pve.
SR should have some SR only skills that make it worth to have more SR in PvP.

Nocros

"I don't see why it is such a big deal to sacrafice HP to deal Major damadge."

to put it simply, in most pvp situations, necros don't deal major instant damage, sacrificing hp or not. necros generall deal their damage with debuffs and their various forms of hp degen spells (life transfer, life siphon, poison, desease, etc.).
soul reaping makes itself shine in pve, especially for minion spec necros. elementalist or mesmer primaries who want to do this simply can't. even elementalists don't have the over-time-energy to build up an army of bone fiends. animating one of those costs 25 energy, my nec/mo's record so far is having 14 up at the same time. this is simply not possible for non-primary necros.

pvp-wise, yes, soulreaping is lacking a bit. sometimes it can give you the energy boost you need when 2 or 3 people die, be it friend or foe. it's just too situational for my taste (AS THE NECRO CLASS ITSELF to some degree) as for many others.
but well, you can't have everything. a primary necro in pve with his often seemingly endless supply of energy, especially minion necros (you get energy from dying minions too), can be such a boost for your party. don't be fooled, 10 bone fiends being kept up at the same time pack quite a scary punch, those lil fellas can hurt plenty.
i simply love my necro and his lil minions and only a necro primary can get the minion spec up to high efficiency. 6 or 7 bone fiends might be possible for an elem primary, but not a dozen and beyond.

Dzan

The key, as many have said, to make an effective pvp necro is Curses. What other two lines you specialize in depends on the role you see for yourself.

I play the often maligned Nec/War in pvp. I use Curses, Blood and Axe and it makes me quite effective at slaying warriors. What is a War/Mo with Weaken Armor and Faint Heartedness on him? Definitely not my equal in hand to hand combat, that's for sure.

Aug

Draken:

What were you doing to get that many corpses to exploit? The only thing I've thought of to make a Minion necro effective in PvP is for them to group with a Monk carrying Unyielding Aura or Vengeance. This would give them a "corpse on demand" type of ability.