Necromancer
If wardens were when ZoS decided to get fancy, necros were when ZoS decided to get diva. Featuring Major Vulnerability and AoE Major Breach, along with options for AoE Minor Protection, Minor Vulnerability and Major Cowardice, necromancers possess good healing and a generous support and sustain toolkit. The unique utility provided by their damage skills, in particular Glacial Colossus, made Necros indispensable to groups for a long time, although their utility as healers diminished after changes to Empower in U35 and the launch of Arcanists with the Necrom DLC. In PvP their ability to resurrect allies, powerful healing and survivability and solid sustain make them excellently tanky healers. They lack mobility though and won’t be able to move as fast or far as other classes using their class toolkit - this makes them more suitable to a point-defense or slow-brawler style of gameplay. When kiting, be sure to make the most use of the burst and range of their various corpse abilities.
A few general notes:
▫️ Corpse Mechanics: Some skills, Braided Tether in particular, rely on the presence of a targetable corpse. In situations without large enemy mobs, one should be prepared to provide their own corpses. This can be achieved easily with a quick precast of Blighted Blastbones, Skeletal Arcanist or a Spririt Guardian. (Mender and Arcanist can also be recast after half their cooldown has expired to form a corpse.)
▫️ Sustain: Necros have several sustain passives and passive sources of recovery. For concision they are not all listed here, as this isn’t something which requires being paid active attention. Do be aware though that compared to some other classes, resources will depend on your summons and corpses around you.
🟦 Bone Tyrant 🟦
▫️ Ruinous Scythe: While this is not a skill often used by healers, it is still very potent in its on-demand Off-Balance and will be helpful mainly in trash fights. Be aware of its Stamina cost!
▫️ Necrotic Potency: A unique skill which allows for rapid ultimate generation in which you consume a maximum of 6 corpses around you per cast and gain 6 Ultimate per corpse for a max of 36 Ult/cast! Use this to quickly gain Ultimate after trash pulls or on bosses with many adds. As it also procs your Corpse Consumption passive you can gain an extra 10 Ultimate once every 16 seconds.
▫️ Agony Totem: This totem provides your group with Minor Protection in the area, applies Major Cowardice to enemies and provides a damage synergy to a single ally. As the totem will be placed on your position and the radius not being very big you might have to adjust your positioning to affect multiple adds and allies. The fearing effect can be helpful for timed counterattacks in PvP, but can be annoying in PvE where it will put crowd-control-immunity onto adds.
Death Gleaning [Passive]: Provides you with both Magicka and Stamina whenever an enemy within 28 meters of you dies. You should take this sudden resource influx into consideration when you’re playing with the mythic Pearls of Elnhofey or MK, especially during trash fights.
🟦 Grave Lord 🟦
Glacial Colossus [Ultimate]: Applies Major Vulnerability to all targets hit. This used to be the only source of Major Vulnerability in the game, though Turning Tide (U33), Archdruid Devyric (U35) and Umbral Edge (U43) provide alternatives nowadays. It’s quite common to see colos being cast in rotation in PvE trial groups to maintain debuff uptime and align it with damage burst phases, or cast in PvP before a big push. The Glacial morph extends debuff time, but includes a stun with its last hit, so may be annoying in situations where you don’t want targets to be crowd-control-immune.
▫️ Blighted Blastbones: A semi-spammable, stamina costing AoE skill which hits hard. DDs usually cast this skill every 1-in-3 (in ideal circumstances), but experienced parse-healers may cast this whenever there’s a free GCD to add some damage when additional buff uptimes or healing aren’t required. This also creates a corpse on your target which can be useful for other Necromancer skills.
▫️ Unnerving Boneyard: A respectable AoE DoT in its own right, this also provides a damage synergy to a single ally, applies Major Breach and Minor Vulnerability to all targets in range, which is useful in trash or in fights with many small adds which are usually not taunted. Ideal for keeping up the ice component of EC.
▫️ Skeletal Arcanist: Functionally an AoE DoT and provider of Major Sorcery and Major Brutality, though doesn’t count as one for the purposes of sets. Importantly, this can be used to gain the massive sustain bonus provided by the Undead Confederate passive if your group does not need the extra healing from your Spirit Guardian. Though this Arcanist deals shock damage, this skill cannot be used for EC as the shock damage dealt counts as coming from a pet, not from yourself for the purpose of the set.
▫️ Skeletal Archer: The stamina morph of Arcanist but only deals ST damage. As its other morph it also gives you Major Sorcery and Major Brutality. This can be used as a stamina-dump for MK when bar space is tight and also procs the Undead Confederate passive.
▫️ Mystic Siphon: Another AoE DoT which deals shock damage and also provide you with Major Savagery and Major Prophecy, making it ideal for keeping up EC, as long as you have corpses close to your target. It also increases damage done passively from having it slotted on your active bar and returns Magicka, noticeably improving your sustain. Casting it requires a corpse to target.
🟦 Living Death 🟦
Reanimate [Ultimate]: An AoE which resurrects allies in the area. Though this is perfectly usable in PvE to get through content when the group is struggling, personally we always recommend doing it the hard way for learning purposes. The skill really shines in PvP though where it can completely flip the tide of a battle, especially when playing in smaller groups. The morph chosen depends on playstyle - Animate Blastbones is more offensive and Renewing Animation provides a huge amount of resources.
▫️ Resistant Flesh: A ST burst heal that applies Minor Defile you yourself, reducing your healing taken, but automatically procs the Curative Curse passive. The additional resistances given by this morph can be useful in cases when DoTs are ticking on allies (e.g. in vSS Tombs and PvP). Moreover it may not be possible to rely on a corpse for the secondary target from the morph Blood Sacrifice or not wanting to consume them with this ability.
▫️ Life Amid Death: An AoE Burst with a large range, covering the same area as Springs. Both morphs can consume multiple corpses on cast to leave behind a very strong but short 5 second HoT. Which morph to use can be situational or a matter of preference - Renewing Undeath provides a purge on corpse consumption, making it amazing for PvP in particular if corpses are present. Enduring Undeath shines in encounters with many corpses as each corpse consumed extends the duration of the HoT, providing extra healing. While this is great for raw healing, is also removes your choice of consuming the corpses with Necrotic Potency for a huge return in Ultimate.
▫️ Spirit Guardian: An ambient auto-targeting ST heal which also improves your personal survivability and is the typical choice to keep up the Undead Confederate passive. Though the other morph is cheaper and heals for more, this morph is preferred in many cases as it lasts longer and hence leaves more GCDs free for other casts. It creates a corpse on expiration or early recast (>8s) but consider this also costs resources.
▫️ Intensive Mender: Though shorter, the scaling means this morph is comparable to a DK’s Cauterize ability, acting as a strong ambient HoT that heals 3 allies total. This makes it an interesting option for some PvP scenarios.
▫️ Braided Tether: A strong HoT with a small radius around you which requires a corpse to target. This especially shines in stacked fights but it can be difficult to hit allies with the tether when kite-healing. It can also be slotted just for it’s extra +3% healing done passive, though other flex-skills may be more useful if you don’t intend on casting this skill. The other morph may be preferable for better Stamina sustain and additional defensibility in PvP
Curative Curse [Passive]: While you have any negative effect on you, you will increase your healing done by 8%, basically negating the debuff Minor Defile which you might encounter during PvP.
Near-Death Experience [Passive]: Increases your Critical Chance for heals (not damage skills!) based on how much health your target has, which becomes especially useful in situations needing high proportions of burst-healing (e.g. vSS and vSE Tombs, vCR Baneful Mark).
Corpse Consumption [Passive]: Your bread and butter passive for Ultimate generation. Every 16 seconds you gain 10 Ultimate when consuming a corpse with any Necromancer skill such as Braided Tether, Unnerving Boneyard or Necrotic Potency.
Undead Confederate [Passive]: Provides +200 raw Magicka and Stamina Recovery whenever Blighted Blastbones, the Skeletal Arcanist, the Spirit Guardian, or any other morphs are active. These values are further modified by Major/Minor Intellect and Endurance buffs, so give a considerable amount of resources back. Try to always have a pet active, either morph of the Arcanist or the Spirit Guardian are excellent options for how long they stay up.
TLDR:
- Healing Springs vs Illustrious Healing: With recent testing we learned that Healing Springs does not smart target on each single tick, but Illustrious Healing does. With this knowledge Illustrious Healing should always be the preferred morph. Read through <#1248427339008839784> for more information.
- If your partner has group buffs overlapping with you, talk it out to split the work, for example:
- Overflowing Altar only needs to be cast from one support. Either coordinate who casts it or keep it on your bars just in case.
- Minor Vulnerability list of convenience: Necro > Scribing: Ulfsild’s Contingency (Growing Impact signature) > Arcanist > Warden > Nightblade
Changelog:
- Echoing Vigor added to staple skills.
- The preferred morph for Colossus is now Glacial Colossus due to increased Major Vulnerability duration.
- Agony Totem is now a good source for AoE Major Cowardice and Minor Protection.
- Changed Illustrious Healing to preferred morph.
