Spike

To Spike is to cause a large influx of something (like a spike in a curve). Spiking can refer to many things, such as spike healing (healing in large chunks), spike damage (causing great spurts of damage) or spike energy (to regenerate energy in chunks).

A spiker is a player whose goal is to quickly inflict massive amounts of damage to a single target, with the tactic of taking them down quickly. This is in contrast with a Nuker, whose objective is to deal large amounts of damage to multiple targets. A nuker basically overwhelms a healer's energy supply, while a spiker would overpower the healers immediate healing capabilities.

Spiking first came into widespread use with teams of elementalists, usually air, who all bombarded the target with a single, high damage spell. While Elementalist spikes may still be seen, many spike teams now use the Ranger profession, combining the Dual Shot skill with either Punishing Shot, Savage Shot, or less commonly Quick Shot. A Necromancer or Mesmer/Necromancer using Order spells (like Order of Pain) may also be added.

Spikers are very popular in PvP because they immediately begin killing opponents, weakening their attack and healing powers. Also, as players accrue death penalty, their maximum health is lowered making them far more susceptible to spiking, creating a slippery slope effect for the opposing team.

Tactics to counter spikers include:

• Protection Prayers are the biggest neutralizer to spike damage. They contain spells that limit damage to allies like Protective Spirit, Life Bond and Life Barrier as well as spells that deflect some or all damage such as Reversal of Fortune and Mark of Protection.
• Skills such as Cry of Frustration, Leech Signet, Distracting Blow, or other interrupts can be used to disrupt a damage dealer in midspike, often lowering the total damage dealt to below the threshold needed to kill an enemy and giving your monks time to get their heals off
• Neutralize them with mesmer skills.
• Bringing a monk with Infuse Health, which with its ¹/₄ second activation time can often be cast in midspike. This monk should be well-protected, because once the spiking team realizes what happened they will likely focus on the infusing monk.