Spike damage

Spike Damage refers to massive amounts of damage dealt to the same target over a short period of time. There is no exact rule on how much damage and how little time qualifies for spike damage. The attackers might measure the amount of damage relative to their average or median DPS, the target's team might measure the damage relative to the target's maximum health, and the healers might measure time relative to their own reaction speed and time needed to cast the necessary skills to protect the target from the next major attack.

Builds focused on spike damage may actually have a lower average DPS due to skill balancing facters of long activation/recharge time, exhausion, or energy cost.

Spike damage might come in the form of one very powerful skill, such as Obsidian Flame; it might come from a fast successive skill combo, such as a knockdown followed by Aftershock; it might also come from multiple damage sources hitting simutaneously, such as being the focus fire of 6 attackers or running into 20 traps overlapping each other.

Spike Damage is very effective against enemies that rely heavily on health regeneration skills (like rangers who heal with Troll Unguent), since the foe takes damage more quickly than they are able to recover. Spike Healing counters spike damage by rapidly healing the amount of health that was lost, but depends on the reaction speed of the healer. Heal too slow and the target might be dead already. Heal too fast might result in big overheal before the majority of the multi-source spike damage comes in.