Soul Reaping-  This is the necromancer’s primary attribute.  This is one of the
only differences between having necromancer as a primary versus as a secondary.
Soul Reaping does not have any related skills that improve based on the
attributes invested in it.  Instead, Soul Reaping restores your energy one
point for every attribute rank you have in it every time anyone dies. The
beauty of it is that it doesn’t matter who dies- friends, enemies, pets,
minions, NPCs, any death at all.  You don’t have to make the kill yourself,
either.  Soul reaping is underrated, but very useful.  Though the necromancer
doesn’t start out with lots of energy like with an elementalist’s energy
storage, the energy regained when people start dying serves as instant energy
regeneration- often when you need it most.  The most important use of soul
reaping is unique to necromancers- spells that target the dead.  Oftentimes,
one needs the instant boost of energy from that death to cast the spell as soon
as there’s a corpse to cast it on.  This is vital for anyone making an army of
minions or protecting their team with blood wells.

Death- If that army of undead minions I just mentioned sounded like your kind
of fun, this is the attribute for you.  Death necros exploit the corpses of
friend and foe alike to raise their legions of the walking dead, which they can
send against their enemies or use as walking batteries by making the most out
of their Soul Reaping- remember, as the minions die they’re giving you energy!
Naturally, death necromancers have other uses for the dead as well.  The right
skills will turn your minion into a walking medkit or a bomb, and you can do
the same with corpses.  Death necros have still more skills that spread disease
and damage around.  It’s not a personal favorite of mine, but there are a lot
of successful minion masters out there, and Putrid Explosion (that corpse bomb
trick) is well loved in pvp.

Blood- For all you vampires out there, welcome to blood necromancy.  Blood
necro skills focus on healing yourself with your enemy’s health or sacrificing
your own health to damage an enemy. Because of this, a blood necromancer may
find that he or she has a startling talent at winning in a one on one fight
with someone of the same level and skill from any other class.  However, duels
don’t exist in Guild Wars, and blood necros rarely find these abilities sought
by other groups. A blood necromancer that focuses on damage spells is
essentially a less powerful version of an elementalist that isn’t as reliant on
monks to stay alive.  It should be noted though, that these necromancers can
turn corpses into wells of blood, which give allies within an area extremely
useful health regeneration, and they can also sacrifice their own health to
give an ally energy regeneration. This last ability is loved by monks in
organized pvp teams, and a blood necro dedicated to keeping his monks with
constant energy can make the task of killing his team nearly impossible.

Curses- My friends call a curse necro a poor man’s mesmer, and in a way they’re
right.  For the most part, Curse necromancers serve the same purposes that
mesmers do- instead of doing direct damage, they’re a support character that
subtly tears the other team’s abilities to pieces and makes them easy prey for
the rest of the team. The difference is focus.  While mesmers tend to disrupt
each class by hitting them where they’re weakest- disrupting casting,
penalizing attacks, sapping energy and so on, essentially making it impossible
for them to do their jobs attacking and healing, Curse necromancers focus on
making the target defenseless.  They remove enemy enchantments or damage those
with them, increase the damage the entire team does to a specific target,
reduce the effects of healing and energy regeneration, spread energy
degeneration and negative conditions done to them among the enemy team, and
reduce the effects of healing.  I don’t recommend curse necromancy for the
starting player because it isn’t necessary on monsters in the main game, and
curse skills don’t appear as often towards the beginning, but when you get to
be level twenty and have to take on elite groups with as many as three monks
trying to heal your targets, a curse necromancer is always a good thing to have
for monk disruption and enchantment removal.

One last thing… don’t worry too much about choosing the wrong place to put
your attributes. One of the best things about Guild Wars is that you can go
back and switch those points around at any time, provided you have enough
refund points.  If you don’t, just get a little exp and you’ll be able to
again.  There’s no worries at all of being stuck with a character specialized
in a way you don’t like. The important thing is that you choose you primary
profession wisely.  Be careful about your secondary too, although don’t stop
and make a new character halfway through the game to make a character with a
new secondary. (Like deleting a N/W for a N/Me, like I thought about doing.)
You’ll see why in time.