From the Guild Wars 2 website:
A necromancer is a practitioner of the dark arts who summons the dead, wields the power of lost souls, and literally sucks the lifeblood of the enemy. A necromancer feeds on life force, which he can use to cheat death or bring allies back from the brink.
A necromancer feeds on death and decay. Life force is the energy that a necromancer uses to extend his own life. Using specific skills, a necromancer builds up life force by attacking and killing enemies. Rather than going into a downed state when he runs out of health, a necromancer automatically activates the Death Shroud ability. A necromancer can continue fighting in the ghostly Death Shroud form until he either runs out of life force or he gets a kill, rallying back into his own corpse.
Necromancers have a unique set of special skills:
Wells — Wells are persistent spells that allow a necromancer to control the area around him. Created at the necromancer's location, wells affect targets within the skill's range. Well of Blood, for example, applies a regeneration boon to all allies within it. A necromancer can only have one well skill active at any time.
Minions — The necromancer summons undead minions to attack foes and do his bidding. Every minion-summoning spell has an associated secondary spell that appears after the minion has been summoned. This secondary spell destroys the minion while providing a powerful effect to the necromancer. For example, necromancers have a healing skill called Summon Blood Fiend that creates a minion that heals its master while it attacks. After the minion has been summoned, the Summon Blood Fiend skill is replaced by the skill Taste of Death, which allows a necromancer to destroy the minion to gain a larger amount of health.
Marks — Necromancers can also place marks--ground-targeted spells with a variety of potent effects. For instance, Mark of Blood damages enemies while placing a regeneration boon on nearby allies. Marks will trigger after a set period of time, but a necromancer can always trigger their marks on command by hitting the skill again.
Fear — Necromancers use a condition not available to any other profession: fear. A removable condition, fear makes an enemy flee directly away from a necromancer for a short period of time. For example, a necromancer can use Doom to instill fear in a single target.
Weapons
When outfitting himself for combat, the necromancer can choose from the following weapons. The necromancer weapons are:- Main Hand: Axe, Dagger, Scepter
- Off Hand: Dagger, Focus, Warhorn
- Two-Handed: Staff
