New to Necromancer

Hi I am coming back from 9 months break. I have level 80 Revenant and Ranger.

Wanted to fresh start with new toon and I chose Necromancer. Can you give me gameplay tips, builds etc? I don't know what are good ways to play with necromancer, is it melee or ranged class? All tips are welcome. Also is necromancer good profession to use my lvl 80 boost?

I have HoT expansion but haven't bought PoF yet.

I'm assuming open world? If so, play how you want. If you want to be optimal in your game play, go for full viper condi scourge or full zerk power reaper. Either or will work in open world. If you're asking about leveling, there really isn't much of a point minmaxing at that stage since it goes by rather quickly. If you want a faceroll semi afk build for core necro for story and general pve, I had fun with minion mancer get spite and use dagger/warhorn+axe/x if you want power, take curses and use scepter/dagger+x if you want condi, otherwise take soul reaping.

Thank you Sephylon for your answer. Okay so for optimal build I can go either condi or power build that's nice. My Ranger and Revenant are both power builds so I might want to try condi build for change. It seems I have to buy PoF expansion for that :D I don't really like minion master build I played it in GW1 and it was kind of boring. I might have to make some condi damage build for leveling and see how it goes.

If you're building condi you will need scourge or reaper, scourge preferred. Scepter is the most masochistic weapon out there, stacking these condies on one single enemy takes ages, and staff comes up....short when it comes to applying condies fast. Only with shades do you get a respectable condi stacking vs groups.

Scepter might be slow by itself, but epi just makes it such a powerful aoe, especially with parasitic contagion. I find it difficult to die when used together in any situation. Add scourge's barriers ontop.Edit, here's the build I usehttp://gw2skills.net/editor/?vRAQRArY7fnE9CN9iV3Ae3A83gFjBL6nFA2WULhoQtSvtOXzrA-jBiHQB16JAAgTCA9U/RjKBd2OAkT/QQWeggK/AA-e