Would you like to see enemy spike teams in PvE?

This has been on my mind for quite a while now actually, ever since I first met the Obsidian Flame spike team in Zaishen Challenge.

Obviously, ANet knows how to design an AI team that can do coordinated spikes, but nowhere else in the game have they used this feature. Similarly, you don't often see the kind of prompt res signet usage that the Zaishen Challenge NPCs do.

I think that adding more spike groups and faster enemy ressing would be a low-cost way to improve the difficulty of PvE.

And like player spikes, they should come in a variety of flavors to encourage different counters:
- Some of them should be imperfect half-second spikes so that they are Infusible. Perfect spikes are OK too, because you can still interrupt them or go massive pressure to drop the spikers before they take out too many of your own team. Naturally, the enemy team should make liberal use of res signets, like they do in Zaisen Challenge, to get their own spikers back up ASAP.
- All the spikes with casting time > 1 second would encourage use of interrupts to defeat the spike.
- Air Spike and Obsidian Spike would teach use of pre-casting Prot Spirit on likely targets.
- Ranger Spike would encourage the use of blinds and evade/block enchants, stances, and shouts.
- Blood Spike would teach that you can't prot against life-stealing, and encourage interrupts, especially AE interrupts like Cry of Frustration.
- Air Spike, Feast of Corruption spike, or Oppressive Gaze spike would also teach you to look for the telltale hex or condition on the spike target, and also quickly remove the condition or hex to neuter the spike.
- Feast of Corruption or Oppressive Gaze spike would teach you how to not bunch up.

Even within a class of spike group, there is room for a range of difficulty levels. You could have the easy Zaishen Challenge style Obs spike, or you could make them E/Me and give them Mantra of Resolve and Ward of Stability to make it harder to counter.

I realize that spike groups might be too difficult for many PuGs to handle, and I have confirmed that Heros do not know how to use Infuse Health or Divine Intervention properly vs spike. Therefore, my suggestion would be to add enemy spike teams as part of quests marked as "Difficulty: Master" or to include them in the "elite" PvE areas such as the new Domain of Anguish. I am not far enough through NF yet to try DoA myself, but from what I hear, much of the challenge comes from the big numbers approach: lots of mobs with high levels. Having lower level mobs that spike instead would be one good way to add variety.

I would but after reading a certain thread I don't think a lot of people are up to it.

I believe they already have Ranger and Elementalist spikes in PvE in Nightfall.

Have you tried the Domain of Anguish recently. It's basically a Spike Team.

Then again, does it count as a spike if you die on one hit anyways?

All of Nightfall has mobs that spike. The precision of AI coordination > human reaction, so it's not exactly something I think should be encouraged in future chapters.

I think ANet may be trying to train us for PvP in PvE end-game areas

You know, there's no real reason to run less than 550~ health in PvE anymore.

The closest thing to an actual spike I've seen are the outcast rangers in the no_cast room of the Deep, that use needling shot in near perfect timing. The problem with a full spike group in PvE is with monster damage buffs from levels, an AI timed spike is more than likely to be perfect and uncatchable. No average or even above average PuG is going to be able to disrupt a spike consistantly, so it will just cause frustration..

The enemies can spike perfectly well as they are. Not even a few hours ago i had henchman killed about 8 times in a single fight before i had to flee by a group of Kournan Bowman on the Consulate Docks mission. The spikes weren't perfect but they were definatly focus firing and doing it quickly.

Its bad enough as it is without giving enemies even more finely tuned spike builds.

we talking lvl 20 spike or 9 lvl 28 spiking for 500 dmg each?

Ever since Factions the mobs have had a tendency towards spiking.
They have professed in this regard even more in Nightfall.
And yeah, DOA, Dead on arrival, the worst.

Every PvE spike has been a spike in frustration for me.

You are correct.

I've seen them many times. Especially the Kournan Rangers. God I hate them...

Personally, I would like to know what those Kournan Bowmen have for armor. They are harder to kill than the Guards (warriors).

Dervish, hammer war, 5 minions took forever to kill one. Does their Whirling Defense last longer than ours?

/not signed for more spike teams

Play a monk in Realm of Torment, then come tell us if there are spike teams in the PvE game.

I completely agree. I believe it would be incredibly fun. Everytime I'm playing the zaishan elite and there are 5+ of those elementalist, I know I'm going to die. (If I really wanted to, I could target the people of my team and get prot spirit on everyone, but I'm too lazy for that, and enjoy challenging myself every now and again)

If there were spike mobs in PvE, I think you'd bring back the E/Mo bonder.

But really, would you want to PLAY through that? AI Interruptions are already on crack or something, because I had my Watch Yourself! shout interrupted with Savage Shot. I'd never had a shout interrupted before, and quite frankly I was scared.

that is quite literally impossible.. shouts don't have an activation, and cannot be interrupted

No. Spiking is for pvp.

I shouldve taken a screenie... my Watch Yourself! was on recharge (as in disabled for X seconds), and the only attack on my "You got hit by" bar was Barrage and Savage Shot.

It is, of course, unfair for the AI to do a perfectly timed spike. ANet understood this when they designed the Zaishen Obs Flame team. If you watch the Obs Flame eles, you will notice that they consistently and deliberately do an imperfect spike every time. One of the elementalists will always start casting roughly a half second before or after the rest of the team. This makes it more human, and gives you a choice as to how you want to deal with it. You can use Infuse Health, or you can use shutdown.

If there were high-level spiker mobs, then the damage would need to be tuned so that using the same imperfect timing approach, the spike would still fail if 1 or 2 of the contributions failed. Level 20 mobs would use 4-man obs spike, but maybe level 24 mobs would use only 3-man. Or you could have a level 20 group in a mainly level 24 area. There are various combinations that would make it manageable.

I hope I'm just not far enough in NF to see it yet. I have played up to the Kourna area and so far have not seen anything that I'd consider a deliberately coordinated spike. I haven't seen the Kournan rangers spike either. It doesn't count if the wammo ran off by himself and was the only available target.

I've finished Factions, but I don't remember seeing any multi-participant spikes there either. When I say spike, I'm not talking about a single boss doing 400 damage to a single target or even to an area-of-effect (although I do enjoy that mechanic and want to see it continue). A single huge hit (eg., level 28 ele boss lightning orb) doesn't require the same kind of approach as when there are a few slightly large hits (4 obs flame spikers) or many many small hits (4-ranger spike with Orders) from different sources.

Maybe I should clarify what I mean when I say spike.
Sure, mobs will sometimes focus fire a single target, and that's good, but focus firing by itself is not what I'm asking for, since that already happens reasonably often.
Rather, I'm specifically referring to a sequence of hits that all arrive in 1 second or less, where if every hit lands, it would be sufficient to kill an unbuffed, full-normal-health, non-DPed player party member. And the enemy team should use this sequence repeatably and deliberately, not by fluke because their skill timers all happened to coincide at a particular moment.

I agree, but I do want to stress that I'm not asking for spikes everywhere, all the time, but just in optional non-critical path areas such as Mission Bonuses, Master difficulty quests, and post-final-mission content. Would the posters in this thread still object to having spikes in parts of the game that are meant to be difficult and optional?

There already are spike teams in PvE. The AI has the same AI as each other, so they frequently all change target at the same time. I see people instantly dead loads, and down the left of the screen are 2 Shatter Enchantments, a Lightning Hammer and 2 Fireballs, all of which happened in the last 1 second.

There are also quite a few places in NF where there are 6 or more rangers and they all attack someone with an attack skill. Devona runs in and is dead before she gets there.

shouts cant be interrupted, it might have been diverted, or perhaps you were in that area of the realm of torment where all skills used are delayed by an aditional 3 seconds


they have whirlind defense (sp?) a ranger skill that from aprox 3-15 seconds they have 75% chance of blocking melee and ranged attacks, and as rangers, they have armor protection against elemental atacks.

I have not gotten very far in the Nightfall campaign so I cannot speak for anything past the first few Command Post quests. However, contrary to what Evilsod and Elruid say, I have not seen any spiking in Factions or in early in Nightfall. In Consulate Docks if you run ahead of the party and become the only target to the archers on the stairs, they will all attack you at the same time. It looks sort of like a spike, but it's really a case of them picking the most convenient target rather than consciously deciding to spike you down.

To me, it isn't a spike unless it does the following:
1. The offense on the spiking team deliberately switches to a single target simultaneously, and
2. They cause over 450 damage to that target in one second or less.

I'm also not counting bosses or extremely high level monsters that hit really hard as a matter of course. A spike has to be a concerted attempt to simultaneously and suddenly focus fire on a target.


If there are mobs that do that later in the game, awesome.

Majority of high level PVE is a spike. Level 31 and 28 monsters have a tendency to hit harder and faster than we are normally used to. It's not as organized as a pvp spike, because it doesn't have to be.

There's been spikes in PvE since the Mineral Springs avicara R-Spike in Prophecies.

...The reason they're a bad idea is not connected to how difficult the individual encounter is. It's got to do with the philosophy of playing though an area.

In PvP you're trying to win the encounter. Each side can take casualties, but the only lifebar that ultimately counts is the last one standing!

In PvE you're trying to win the encounter without taking casualties. You're planning on fighting more than one encounter before resetting your morale, and any fight that ends up with any of your party getting killed is a bad fight.

i agree

Kournan bowmen have been spiking quite well in what I've seen. The Consulate Docks mission was pretty deadly for that.

Find the Sandstorm Boss.

If 5 400 damage hits in under 5 seconds is not spike damage, I don't know what is it.

PvE has spikes since start.

Whenever you encounter a group of x (x > 2) same type of mobs, they have a high tendency to spike.

The following conditions are required:
- All creatures with spike capacity get agroed at the same time
- They have a high preference for certain skill

If 3 casters get agroed, but they need between 0 and 4 seconds to get into casting range, you won't get spiked.

This isn't some great design, but merely the artefact exhibited by AI. Each creature is handled individually. While they do randomize their skills, with their limited (5 skills, usually even less) they will very likely use the same skill. There is no inherent coordination, it all depends when they agro and when they start attacking.

This behaviour first became apparent in Factions. Groups are tightly packed, there's commonly 3 or more creatures of same type. Terrain provides chokepoints.

In addition, Ai mobs spam their skill while energy allows it. During initial attack, or during multiple group agro, this will result in spikes, simply due to probability.

A mixed creature group cannot spike. If you have a W,R,E,Me,Mo, then they simply deal damage to same target, but not a true spike. A shadow army group of 3 rangers however can spike, but they prefer barrage spam.

Spikes however are mostly innefective outside of flukes, especially with skills like Shield of Absorbtion. The only way a mob could spike a single person is with a group of 5 or more level 20 creatures of same type. Everything else is simply typical AI overkill, due to level difference bonus.

True spikes as seen in PvP exist to bypass some very specific build deficiencies (blood spike, obs spike, ranger spike, spike whatever). And since PvP and PvE builds work around completely different aproach, they aren't comparable. Even in pvp, setting up a spike requires quite a specific setup, and even there it's frequently countered, or at least executed imperfectly.

Some people are still unclear on the kind of spike I'm talking about so I will define two terms for the purposes of this thread:

There is deliberate spike, which is what you see in pre-planned spike teams in PvP and in the Zaishen Challenge Obs Flame team, and which is what I was referring to in my original post.

Then there is incidental or accidental spike, which is what everyone so far has described when they gave examples of spikes that exist in PvE.

The PvE spikes that everyone is talking about do not happen because the AI is deliberately trying to perform a spike, but it is instead an artifact of how the AI works, as Antheus described so well:

What I want to see in PvE is the addition of deliberate spikes to round out the incidental spikes that we already have.

So with this distinction in mind, I invite everyone who said that PvE already has spikes to answer the more specific question: does PvE have "deliberate" spikes?

Regardless of the answer to that question however, I think it's clear that many of the respondents here are of the mind that the incidental spikes are hard enough and that adding deliberate spikes would be too much.

But most of the respondents who are speaking out against spikes appear to be against a general increase in spikes and have not answered the more specific question of, would you like to see deliberate spikes added to hard and optional portions of PvE?

Very good points. And that's why I'm calling for deliberate spike groups in optional "hard" parts of PvE, not just anywhere. For example, one good place would be as the very last encounter in an intentionally difficult quest, after which you'd likely be mapping back to town anyway.

I just wanted to point out that savage shot doesn't cause recharge, distracting shot does.