The Necromancer class in The Elder Scrolls Online is multi-faceted, able to take on damage, support, and tank roles in a party setting. It's one of two downloadable classes, the other being the Warden, which wasn't included in the original game.
The Necromancer is unique in Elder Scrolls Online for its death-related abilities and its tendency to get the player arrested – summoning and defiling corpses in the middle of a city isn't the smartest idea, after all. The Grave Lord, Bone Tyrant, and Living Death skill trees are each oriented around one of the three classic RPG archetypes, being DPS, Tanking, and Support.
Updated January 28, 2022 by Erik Petrovich: While it's perfectly possible to mix and match Necromancer class abilities between its three skill trees, Necromancers benefit a lot from sticking primarily to one and focusing on damage output, mitigating damage, or healing themselves and their party. This makes choosing the right abilities all the more important, more important than keeping an eye out for guards when resurrecting corpses around Tamriel. Abilities like Blastbones are found in just about every Necromancer DPS build, but more niche skills like Ghostly Embrace help to expand the class' potential in more specific situations (in this instance, group PvE).
Grave Lord Skill Tree
The Grave Lord skill tree is the Necromancer's go-to damage skill tree. The Flame Skull and Blastbones abilities are indicative of how this skill tree generally works; the base ability deals decent damage in some way, but morphs tend to power them up immensely.
It's the first tree that Necromancers are likely to develop in a playthrough thanks to its DPS-focused abilities. Don't forget about the other two trees, though, as a Necromancer can't survive without self-heals and buffs.
Pestilent Colossus - Ultimate
Frozen Colossus is both a Criminal Act and the ultimate ability of the Grave Lord skill tree. Its two morphs, Pestilent Colossus and Glacial Colossus, are mostly the same – they both increase enemy damage taken, they both smash three times, and they both only last for three seconds total. Pestilent Colossus wins out because of its reliable effect in boss encounters.
Glacial Colossus will stun all enemies when it's done smashing the ground, but this doesn't affect larger-than-normal foes or bosses. Pestilent Colossus deals increasing amounts of damage with each smash, all of which will affect enemies no matter their type. The ultimate unlocks at Rank 12 of the Grave Lord tree, which can then be morphed into Pestilent Colossus at Rank 4.
Rapid Rot - Passive
The Rapid Rot passive simply increases damage cause by damage-over-time effects by 7% or 15% , depending on the rank. The passive applies to a variety of abilities in the Grave Lord tree as well as to other Necromancer abilities.
It unlocks at Grave Lord Rank 39, which is relatively late into max level progression but nonetheless provides a huge damage boost to the class' favourite damage type.
Stalking Blastbones - Morph
The Blastbones skill is a DPS Necromancer's bread and butter. It's pretty cheap, creates a corpse for other abilities, and explodes in an area rather than dealing direct damage to one foe. The Stalking Blastbones morph is powerful because it increases in magnitude for every second spent chasing the target, to a maximum 50% increase in damage.
Blighted Blastbones, on the other hand, is a Stamina-based ability that reduces Healing Received for those hit by its blast. This is not the worst choice for PvP, but Stalking Blastbones just does more work for a long-distance damage-oriented Necromancer. Blastbones unlocks at Grave Lord Rank 4, which can then be morphed after reaching Rank 4 in the ability itself.
Bone Tyrant Skill Tree
The Bone Tyrant skill tree is as close to a pure tanking tree as the Necromancer has available. It's built around the concept of, well, building a new body around the player's existing one to enhance defensive capabilities.
Death Scythe and Bone Armor are a player's first two choices in this tree, which restore health through damage and provide a flat defensive boost, respectively. The skill tree has a lot of tanking-specific abilities, like pulling enemies and interrupts, as well as a powerful tanking Ultimate.
Ravenous Goliath - Ultimate
The Necromancer's Ultimate ability in the Bone Tyrant tree is the Bone Goliath Transformation skill. This Ultimate turns the Necromancer into a Bone Goliath, restoring a huge amount of health and restoring health with each melee hit in the transformed state.
The Ravenous Goliath adds a powerful addendum to this: a damaging aura that heals the player for 100% of damage. It unlocks at Bone Goliath Rank 4, and it's much more useful than the AoE bash provided by the Pummeling Goliath morph.
Death Gleaning - Passive
Necromancers have a lot of useful passives across each of their three skill trees. Most of these passives can only be used if a skill of the associated skill tree is slotted, though. Death Gleaning is one such passive that only activated with a Bone Tyrant skill slotted in the player's ability bar.
Death Gleaning restores Magicka and Stamina whenever an enemy the Necromancer is in combat with dies, 100 at Rank 1 and 200 at Rank 2. The keyword here is "in combat with" so players don't necessarily have to have damaged an enemy to trigger this restorative effect. Rank 1 of Death Gleaning unlocks at Bone Tyrant Rank 8, and Rank 2 unlocks at Bone Tyrant Rank 18.
Ghostly Embrace - Morph
The Grave Grasp ability ensnares, immobilizes, and stuns enemies depending on their placement in three areas of effect. It reduces their damage done, too, but overall isn't too effective without a Morph. Both morphs for this ability are decent, but the Ghostly Embrace morph is just more powerful.
Empowering Grasp, which unlocks at Grave Grasp Rank 4, gives allies the Empower buff and gives the player's Skeletal Mage and Spirit Mender a huge boost too.
Living Death Skill Tree
The Living Death skill tree is focused on keeping the Necromancer and their party alive, through direct heals and supporting buffs alike. Solo players can benefit from its powerful self-healing abilities, but it mostly serves its best use in dungeons and group content.
The Living Death skill tree is the only non-PvP tree to feature a mass revive in the form of Reanimate. Its first two introductory abilities, Render Flesh and Expunge, heal allies at the cost of one's own health and remove debuffs from allies, respectively.
Renewing Animation - Ultimate
The Ultimate ability for the Living Death skill tree is, of course, Reanimate, which lets the player instantly resurrect up to three allies at a target location without having to use up soul gems. The Renewing Animation ability makes this a more powerful mid-combat revive.
The morph, which unlocks at Reanimate Rank 4, gives the player Magicka and Stamina for each ally resurrected. When the entire party is right about to wipe, pop off a Renewing Animation and get straight back to that dirty work of killing bosses.
Undead Confederate - Passive
The Undead Confederate passive sounds more like an early Xbox title than a Necromancer ability. Nevertheless, this passive is incredibly beneficial for a Necromancer as it increases Magicka and Stamina recovery whenever a summon is active.
Casting lots of spells is the name of the Necromancer's game, and being able to do that more reliably is always a good idea. This passive unlocks at Living Death Rank 39.
Braided Tether - Morph
The Restoring Tether ability is a late-progression ability for Necromancers that gives healing to the player and allies between them and a target corpse. It increases healing by a flat 3% and is most easily comparable to the Mystic Syphon ability from the Grave Lord tree.
The Braided Tether morph, though, also provides a healing effect to allies who are nearby the player, not just between them and their target corpse. It makes the ability apply much more easily to the party, and unlocks at Restoring Tether Rank 4.
The Elder Scrolls Online is available for PC, PlayStation 4 and 5, and Xbox One and Series X|S.