Power Necromancer Axe & Focus / Scepter & Sword GW2 Necromancer WvW Builds
Necromancer without an elite spec gives up a shroud upgrade and gets the Curses line for it, and in a WvW zerg that trade still holds up, because Curses is where the boon corruption lives.
Path of Corruption makes shroud skill 2 convert the enemy's boons into conditions on top of what it already does. 
Plague Sending sends the conditions sitting on you back at them with your first attack out of shroud — and 
Plaguelands, the elite, bleeds you when you cast it, which is what feeds it. Against a squad rolling in on stacked 
Might and 
Stability, that stream of corruption is worth more than another Greatsword in the pile.
What you do not get is a spike. 
Death Shroud turns life force into a second health bar and gives you shroud skills, but it is not where your damage comes from. You live on Axe autoattacks, well placement and corruption, at range, behind the melee. If you want to be the one landing the hit, Reaper and Ritualist are down the hall.
It also runs without owning an expansion, which is not nothing.
1 Necromancer build
Power Necromancer Axe & Focus / Scepter & Sword Playing Necromancer in WvW
The whole spec is life force. Death Shroud spends it as health, the 
Gluttony and 
Soul Battery minors are there to give you more of it, and every decision you make in a fight is really a decision about whether you can afford to be in shroud right now.
Our build asks two things of you. Place the wells where the enemy has to stand rather than where they are, and get into shroud with conditions on you so Plague Sending has something to transfer. Neither is difficult; both are easy to forget when the fight starts.
Where it struggles is that it has no answer to being caught. There is no Stability and no stun break on the bar, no blink, and no burst to trade with — if the enemy reaches you, the build has nothing to show them. It belongs behind the line, and it is honest about that.