Every game needs a Necromancer! This week in our Guild Wars 2 column we take a look at the newly announced Necromancer class. In history we as a people are fascinated with death, no one can avoid it; everyone fears it in some way, which is the basis of our attraction to the Necro arts. Guild Wars 2 offers a Necromancer class that will bring new life to those rotting corpses and offer minions abound for players who love to order small nasties and skeletal bodies to do their bidding. Not only that you have the power over souls as well and even the ability to resurrect your comrades…isn’t that against the point of a Necromancer? Regardless, let’s take a look at the Necromancer class.

The list of skills that ArenaNet is showing off looks very promising for players. Wells give you a controlled area that can affect all targets within. Can anyone say, Totems, Totems, Totems! The write up speaks about a regeneration as well. The idea of a healing well sounds good for boosting players in a fight. Wells seem to be something strategic on the battlefield and with enough variety they should give a player some great areas to chop down loads of mobs, target a boss smack in the middle, or heal your friends if things get ugly. All I can say is they better have skulls on them.

The minion write up sounds fantastic. First you summon a minion, who goes off and fights as well as heals you. The minion runs around causing havoc and while the undead are doing their worst to your enemies you suddenly flip to a new ability. You can destroy them at will for some benefit. The example being given here talks about the minion being destroyed to heal the Necromancer. This is great and all, but what about undead bombs? Surely there will be minion spells that explode into a group of mobs and take them down. AreaNet has plenty of options here. All Necromancers have minions, but this playstyle certainly offers a lot of fun to the character. Please give us more!

Marks are also a nice touch. They sound more like traps which can be triggered at any time. These spells seem to be something that is shown off in the video, which is awesome. Having a set mark down seems to be the way to set mobs up for failure. Marks seem to be the Necromancer’s bread and butter in terms of control and direct attack spells. Nothing beats throwing down circles of power and the ground based spells also appear to have healing abilities. So the question comes to mind, are Necromancers good with healing in parties? We have already seen that every class has some form of healing. The Necro seems to have a lot of heal over time spells which benefit the party. They do mention a potential resurrection ability as well.

Last but not least, every wielder of the undead deserves Fear in their arsenal. Nothing beats fear in any game. Crowd control is critical in MMOs whether you are in PvP or fighting a boss, it always has a use. Fear is a given and will help the Necromancer make enemies run screaming. I always say that Priests and Warlock in World of Warcraft with their fear abilities are very tough to fight and make your life miserable in PvP. This is a great touch to the Necromancer and hopefully ArenaNet will find some creative uses for this ability as well.

Overall, the Necromancer is a casting force to be reckoned with. I only hope they allow the Charr to play as Necromancers. Then I will have the perfect combination, a nasty looking animal race with the power to command the Undead. For now I cannot wait to see more from this class. Watch the video if you have not already. Guild Wars 2 continues to deliver!