Core Necromancer

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The following build is designed to guide you through your first playthrough, or simply offer you a decent and reliable Core build if you are on Free to Play account. Core builds are not advised to be used later in the game due to superiority of elite specializations.

Core Necromancer is a highly self-sufficient build that can supply itself with Might, Fury, and Quickness for good damage output. Additionally, Core Necromancer generates great sustain from life-stealing and absorbing damage using the necromancer profession mechanic Death Shroud which shields your health bar with life force generated by using abilities or from nearby deaths!

This build also has excellent burst area of effect damage thanks to staff, Well of Darkness, and powerful necromancer Death Shroud abilities – specifically Life Transfer.

A natural followup to this build is Power Reaper which takes a lot of fundamental mechanics from necromancer and focuses even more on massive melee cleave damage!

Power Reaper

Damage

Select difficulty

Greatsword
Staff

Build Fundamentals

This build utilizes synergy between Fear and the spite grandmaster trait Dread to gain high uptime of Quickness and Fury. This Quickness uptime allows you to use abilities in quick succession to high damage and to generate a lot of Might from Awaken the Pain and using the Death Shroud auto-attack Life Blast which activates Reaper's Might.

Doing this is straightforward, simply use your Fear skills as often as possible and blast everything with your weapon and shroud skills!

The key Fear skills are as follows:

• Reaper's Mark
• Wail of Doom
• Doom (third ability in Death Shroud)

Note: Dread reduces the cooldown of Doom by 50% whenever you kill an enemy, when fighting multiple enemies in the open world you’ll be able to use this ability a ridiculous amount of times for incredible crowd control and Quickness uptime! This combined with Fear of Death causing Fear to generate life force (even while in shroud) can allow you to stay in Death Shroud pretty much forever as long as you keep killing enemies!

Death Shroud

Death Shroud is the necromancer’s profession mechanic. Necromancers generate life force from using abilities and being near things when they die, they can then use this life force to enter Death Shroud and shield their health with the power of death and gain access to new abilities. Watch out though, while in death shroud you can’t be healed except by stealing life!

These are the abilities that you get while in Death Shroud:

• Life Blast: powerful ranged attack that will be the key ability to use for consistent damage!
• Dark Path: utility ability, excellent for chasing enemies down as if you hit something it turns into Dark Pursuit allowing you to teleport to the enemy you hit!
• Doom: long duration Fear, perfect for shutting down enemies.
• Life Transfer: very powerful area attack that also restores some life force while in shroud, because this ability strikes so many times it has amazing synergy with Vampiric and Vampiric Presence from blood magic which cause your attacks to steal life. These two traits will cause Life Transfer to restore a large amount of health when striking multiple targets.
• Tainted Shackles: this ability tethers you to nearby enemies, applying Torment and after a few seconds any tethered enemies will be struck with moderate damage and will be affected by Immobilize for a few seconds. However, if you move away from enemies the tether will break somewhat nullifying the skill.

Weapons

Staff

On staff, skills 2-5 are called ‘marks’ these are trap-like area of effect abilities that explode when an enemy walks into them or if you just directly cast them on your opponents. They all do great damage and have some nifty utility too.

Chillblains will Poisoned and Chilled enemies, slowing them down and reducing healing, Putrid Mark transfers 3 conditions from you to each target hit, this can easily remove all conditions on you in one go, additionally it’s a blast finisher which you can combo with the poison field from Chillblains for area Weakness which will further reduce the offensive capacity of your foes!

The staff autoattack Necrotic Grasp deals reasonable damage and is very good for building up life force if needed. However instead of sitting around on staff too much, either swap over to dagger or leap into Death Shroud to unleash shroud abilities!

Dagger Warhorn

Dagger is a strong melee weapon that also has a very good self healing ability: Life Siphon! Life Siphon has a very short cooldown and is pretty much a second heal skill – it’s also ranged which makes it perfect for regaining health at a safe distance. Dark Pact brings a lot of utility to the dagger toolkit, casting it will Immobilize a target and remove two boons, boons are very strong so removing them from your opponents can make it significantly easier to defeat them!

Warhorn grants addition Fear application and also some free Swiftness, extra lifesteal and life force from Locust Swarm.Locust Swarm can be used right before entering Death Shroud to continue to generate life force while in shroud.

Utility Skills

Summon Blood Fiend attacks your enemies and heals you with every attack, you can kill this minion to heal yourself using Taste of Death which is good for emergencies but if possible leave this minion up so it continuously heals you over time!

Spectral Grasp is an amazing tool for instantly refilling life force and gathering up enemies to blast down immediately!

Well of Power converts conditions on you and your allies into boons, applies Might, and will break you out of stuns too – all of that with a very short 25 second cooldown!

Well of Darkness deals high area damage and applies pulsing Blinded and Chilled. Using this on a pack of enemies will usually completely prevent them from hitting you while you destroy them!

Summon Flesh Golem is a monstrous minion that can be an effective tank in open world and story content and can be commanded to Charge at enemies knocking them down!

Crowd Control

This build has massive crowd control, your opponents won’t be able to do anything and defiance bars will melt away!

• Spectral Grasp
• Doom
• Wail of Doom
• Summon Flesh Golem Charge
• Reaper's Mark
• Well of Darkness pulsing Blinded is especially good for shutting down the damage output of large groups of enemies
• Dark Pact

Alternatives

Lich Form is an epic elite skill that will transform you into a powerful lich capable of summoning exploding minions, sending out a wave of fear in front of you and launching deadly projectiles at any who stand in your way!

Bringing Well of Suffering into the mix instead of Spectral Grasp will give you even more area damage!

If you are finding yourself getting stunned a lot, take Spectral Armor for an additional stunbreak.

Additional minions, especiallySummon Bone Minions are a lot of fun!

Gearing tips

Since this build is designed to be your entry point to Guild Wars 2 world, let’s start with the basics, if you haven’t checked the guides below, give them a read to make yourself familiar with game basics.

Game basics – first steps in Tyria

This short guide contains answers to the questions you might have on the first days of your adventure, such as where to look for tips, how to look for a group (LFG), what are the most important parts of the interface, and more!

Game systems and mechanics

Downstate, dodging, skills tied to weapon types, heart quests, and meta events, it all can be overwhelming for the new player. This guide attempts to answer all your questions, even those you don't yet know you have.

Gearing guide for PvE

This guide aims to teach you about the easiest, fastest, and most importantly, cheapest methods of acquiring your first entry-level equipment for instanced PvE content.

Introduction to the Necromancer

Dark arts masters who can drain the life force from nearby deaths to take the form of powerful Death Shroud, learn how to become powerful caster and summon undead minions to do your bidding.

Don’t try to invest in Runes and Sigils before you acquire proper level-80 Exotic gear with Berserker’s stats as transferring upgrades is not possible without destroying the item, and retrieving them during the process has a small chance with most salvage kits.

From drops, crafting and level-up rewards pick items with Power, and on later levels supplemented by Precision and Ferocity.

Unlocking skills

If you’re looking up this build as you’re leveling through the wide world of Tyria we recommend unlocking wells and minions early on!

The first specialization at level 21 should be Spite as it offers the most useful traits in early levels. At level 45 get Soul Reaping and finally at level 71 unlock Blood Magic.