Guild Wars 2

This will most likely be a work in progress for some time as I have not unlocked all of the racial skills and thus can’t give good practical rundown of how the various skills contribute. If anyone has additional advice, that would be welcome.

Asura
Radiation Field: Let’s start with an anomoly with racial skills. Radiation Field is agruably better than the closest profession skill: Corrosive Poison Cloud. The skill has a much shorter cast time, longer range, and longer duration and no self-weakness for the same effect. The reason why CPC can be argued to be better is the shorter recharge and the fact necros can manipulate the self-weakness in a number of different ways. Most of the time, Radiation Field is what you should probably be using.

Pain Inverter: A fantastic skill that really doesn’t have a profession equivalent. This is the most reliable method for a necro to generate Confusion and it’s AoE to boot. This one is a good addition to a necro’s skill bar for that fact alone.

Technobabble: It’s not bad. 2 second instant cast daze at 1200 range can definitely be very helpful. That said, most necro builds have a couple of interrupts available to them, and they are available more than once every 45 seconds. It’s useful, but my experience with necros is that you usually have more important things on your skill bar.

Summon 7-series Golem: Probably better served by just using Flesh Golem, the closest class skill. Shorter cast, shorter cooldown, and has a very useful active.

Summon Power Suit: Juggernaut (Warrior elite) is probably the closest class skill here. Necros are much better served by just hitting Lich Form. More mobile, harder hitting, ranged, and you have stability. Not worth it.

Summon D-series Golem: Having never seen this skill be used, I cannot comment on it. My guess: just use Flesh Golem and you will do better.

Charr
Shrapnel Mine: Not too bad for a condition necro due to its very long duration bleed and somewhat short recharge, but really, Grasping Dead is better. It does have a range advantage over the closest class skill in Spike Trap (from Ranger), but this can definitely have uses.

Battle Roar: Clearly a weaker “For Great Justice”, Battle Roar has some group support that necros can enjoy. Minion masters especially like the Fury buff for their pets. Any time that For Great Justice is good, so is Battle Roar. Worth considering, but not a good permenant addition to your skill bar.

Hidden Pistol: This skill is a godsend to Necros is some fights. It’s a rather short recharge and provides two things a necro is in definite need of: dodges and combo finishers. Lupicus, Priest of Grenth, Legendary Dredge powersuit, and similar ones are fights where this skill is exceptionally useful.

Artillery Barrage: Don’t equip. Ever. Meteor Shower is the closest class skill to this and is superior in every way, shape, and form. The range on this skill is quite pathetic. You might as well run up the other five steps and drop Well of Suffering. You would do more damage this way and be able to get back to using other skills much more quickly.

Warband Support: An interesting alternative to Flesh Golem, this is for when you need more bodies. Both soldiers hit pretty hard and are durable. They can easily fill in for a person while rezzing an ally.

Charrzooka: Not a bad option for necros. This opens up access to Burning as well as decent ranged damage. The recent buffs to bundles made this skill better too. Of particular note is the #2 skill, which provides AoE repetitive knockback. Fantastic for stripping defiant off of bosses or knocking a WvW zerg back from you and out of any coordination they may have had. The #4 is also a great escape tool for when you have been caught.

More to come later

If i may add:
Human

Prayer to Dwayna – 1 second cast time; 30 second recharge : Good overall healing skill if you want a plain hp, but other heals are instantly superior if used with their niche tricks. Ok option during leveling from 40+ to level 70 where it could make a difference because of a tad shorter cast time and good/high base heal.

Prayer to Kormir – 1 second cast time; 40 second recharge: Utterly useless for a Necromancer, but great for some other classes, with at least 2 ways of condition transfer or cleanse every necro pretty much must have it falls flat on its kitten just like Kormir did in GW.
(the 2 combined are just a consume conditions thus, unless for lore, i wouldnt use them)

Prayer to Lyssa – 3/4 second cast time; 12 second recharge: Second best human skill for a necro, being both a option for boons and a condition that seems to more often than not be useful (chill, blind, confusion, burn). One could and maybe should even keep it in fractals and explorable mode dungeons.

Avatar of Melandru – no second cast time; 180 second recharge: Useless, in every possible way if compared, kinda like Artillery Barrage it doesnt bring anything of benefit for its cost, the cast times are too long for what they bring despite the seemingly great team support and unlike the ranger ultimate binding roots dont bleed the enemy and most mobs will destroy them in a hit.

Reaper of Grenth – 1 second cast time; 180 second recharge: Useful for power builds that didnt get lich form yet or a dungeon in that blinds from plague form wont do much but there is a need for reliable aoe damage reduction (chill is amazing), sadly falls off the higher level the player is, but not without its uses if one really wants more chills and is willing to play without stability.

Hounds of Balthazar – 1 second cast time; 240 second recharge: Burn, Knockdown, 2 more meat shields, whats not to like about this skill again seeming like one of the rare cases where the alternative (Flesh Golem) might be inferior, their aoe burn aura instantly sets them in combat and they cc the first target to attack them. For sure the best elite for a condition necromancer who doesnt care about his defensive power.
Only downside is the long recharge that might end up making it inferior to Lich in terms of Damage output over long fights.

keep up the good work.

Norn skills:

• Call Owl- The bleed on this skill is pretty amazing, not a bad option for a conditionmancer
• Call Wurm- Not an extremely useful skill other than for kicks when using alongside flesh wurm, can have your own little wurm militia. The fact that it can move usually puts it into the worst spots and it dies stupidly fast.
• All of the norn transform skills are lackluster at best and the ability to move while attackign on most leaves them severely crippled and rarely a viable option* :
• Become Bear- Doesn’t really synch well with most necro builds. I suppose it could be used with either a minion build or a power build (mostly for the KD’s and might) but other than that it’s rarely useful and recharge is too high.
• Become Snow Leopard- The only saving grace of this skill is it’s ability to stealth and dash away, it has a rooted attack and the scream/weakness is low range and low duration. The leap/kd puts you in bad situations more times than it helps.
• Become Raven- Raven is one of the more useful forms. It has good bleeding potential, and decent cc capability, but like other norn forms suffers from very long cd and low duration time.
• Become Wolf- On paper it seems like it would work well with a vampiric necro, the healing from blood frenzy is honestly how our vampiric should work imo, and the fear should work well with the terror trait. I personally haven’t tested the fear since the terror update to see if the damage portion works off this skill or not. It’s not a bad support form and the regen is nice.