Origin of "spike damage"

Anyone know why/when GW players started using this unique terminology? In every other MMO it's simply left as "direct damage", and I haven't seen it before playing Guild Wars. Is it actually an import from something else, or what? I -want- to say MTG has something really, really close to this term, but I can't recall, and google is failing me.

i've always heard it as spike dmg... even in other games

same here, always spike... spike damage isn't just refering to a single attack though (usually,) it's when attacks are directed all at the same time, to create one huge damaging blow, by combining several smaller hits.

Think of a damage per second graph. with degen the graph would be somewhat constant, but with 'spike' damage, the damage would be zero, until the spike, when it would jump up, and then go back to zero again, looking like a spike

and thus, the origin of the word

I've never heard the term before either, its either direct-damage or "nuke" for other games. Wasnt exactly hard to understand though.

It's not the same as "direct" or "nuke" - spike damage refers to coordinating the large damage hits to occur near-simultaneously, to defeat counter-heals and such.

- Nuking is simply putting a lot of damage out, typically in an area.
- Direct damage is simply a form of damage that is useful to spike with, as it is more reliable than trying to spike with damage that may well miss.

Its appearance in GW is likely at least in part due to the combat graph, in which the rapid damage/heal cycles look like spikes.

Spiking doesn't mean direct damage, it's not even damage in all cases and it doesn't have to be with more then 1 guy either. It's a combination of spells by 1 or more people to either heal for a big amount (Healing spike), or deal damage for a big amount (Damage spike).

You're all wrong! It started when my pet wolf, Spike, defeated all challengers in the Arenas! Bwahahaha!

I think the MTG term you are looking for is "Burn". Where the deck focuses on a large amount of damage dealing spells to quickly damage your opponent.

But anyway....