Best Caster Spike

What is the best single target caster spike? Counting things like corpse explosions, but not things like AoE or minions. Things like air spike or necrosis/IV spike. Must not involve other characters, just my own abilities, so no barbs or MoP. It must have a relatively short reload time and be usable in HM. What class and spec?


*EDIT* What is the most caster damage in hard mode? Besides things like MM or MoP.

Ebon Vanguard Sniper Support

Your expecting to solo spike a target with as much damage as possible? Odds are if you did find a build that could almost instant kill a single target the recharge would be way too much to be good.

Involve heroes and discord is pretty much the only thing with a quick recharge that could qualify as a "caster spike". But for your own build there really isn't some special build that could do a huge quick recharging spike (most likely would need assassin's promise and be able to time it with whoever your with).

Any/A: Assassin's Promise>You Move Like A Dwarf!>Ebon Vanguard Assassin Support>Finish Him!

It works great with Sabway or Discord.

ebon vanguard sniper support+shouts

Assassin's Promise, Ebon Vangaurd Sniper Support, "You Move Like a Dwarf", "Finish Him".
Roll with disord or any form of spike heroes.
If you arnt killing instantly your killing in under 4 seconds.

Pack of spirits.

Best part is it's also pressure at the same time, due to complete, constant sustainability.

10 bone fiends, 1 golem, SoH+GDW on all of them, Oou at 20 DM, Ebon Ward at r10 EV, all of them hitting at once.

Best caster spike /coolface

Quote: Originally Posted by Kokuyougan but not minions.

Quote:

Originally Posted by IronSheik 10 bone fiends, 1 golem. Someone didn't read the OP?

So nothing like the (forgive me) WoW Destro Lock? I just recently came back after realizing what a P.O.S it was, but the whole style is clinging to me.

Massive glass cannon with unreducable dmg on a single target with a 15-20 sec cooldown.

I dont see the point of u wanting to spike as solo, but i'm assuming u are taking a party of 7 other people/henchmen with you. Being so, the best thing you wanna think first is:

If i wanna spike solo monsters in HM, then i'll need ARMOR IGNORING skills to do it. Notice that this is a very important concept because, for instance, Eles wont be able to spike stuff in HM since you know that they have an damage limit due to the high armor of the mobs in HM. Same aplyes for warriors or dervishes or sins using melle skills (unless they are empowered with strenght and Honour and Judges Insight)

Being so, you will have a nice variety of skills for that effect in the Necromancer profession. I'm thinking in soul barbs spike with sin promisse, soulbarbs, Eboon Vanguard sin, "Finish him", parasitic bond, defile flesh, rend ench (or defile defenses) and weaken armor or barbs. You can also use a usual Depravity build but i thik the damage over time will be much slower compared with the build i gave you.

Sorry for not being able to provide you a bar for that biuld but i'm actually on my job and i shouldnt even being writing this :P

gl hf an dont go play GW pve by urself. get some friends! ^^

EDIT: i just remembered couple important stuff

1. You can have an alternative build of that one i gave you if u switch Assasin's promisse for Cultists fervor. (12 curse +1+1; 12+1 blood magic; leftovers in Soul reaping. Dont forget to spam parasitic andefile defenses is u have it as much as you can, energy wont be a problem!)

2. Pay attention to the weapon sets you use. Very important to use a 40/40 set Curses while your using curses skills!!! Also important to use a enchantment weapon if u using cultists fervor variant.

3. The use of Rend or Defile defenses depends on the area you are in. Same for Barbs/weaken armor.

4. that build will be more efective if you take some other hexers of the same type with you and a EoE ranger. Notice that the EoE is very efective if u want to take down a massive group only spiking rapidly 1 only target.

edited. look at the op.

I'm curious about your rationale for wanting a single-target caster spike in PvE. Given no healing mobs, isn't it better to do 250 damage to 6 different monsters than 1000 damage to one monster?

Quote: Originally Posted by Div

I'm curious about your rationale for wanting a single-target caster spike in PvE. Given no healing mobs, isn't it better to do 250 damage to 6 different monsters than 1000 damage to one monster? Actually it's the opposite imo div. Because, if you kill all the monsters at once over time. Every second they are alive they can do 100% damage to you (not gonna include stuff like protects or conditions). If you have 10 targets and slowly aoe them down you'll take a lot more damage.

If you spike down 1 target your only taking damage from now 9 enemies. So for general pve spiking is what you want to do. You take a lot less damage when you can spike down more foes quicker.

Your logic is fine, but the solution is to not AoE them slowly as you suggest. MoP + HB + whatever other melee buffs you want will kill faster than spiking them one by one. Also, even though you might be taking damage from more enemies, the difference is only likely to be a few seconds, and if you wipe in a few seconds your team has serious issues.

Quote: Originally Posted by MercenaryKnight

Actually it's the opposite imo div. Because, if you kill all the monsters at once over time. Every second they are alive they can do 100% damage to you (not gonna include stuff like protects or conditions). If you have 10 targets and slowly aoe them down you'll take a lot more damage.

If you spike down 1 target your only taking damage from now 9 enemies. So for general pve spiking is what you want to do. You take a lot less damage when you can spike down more foes quicker. Maths!

5 Targets:
If I take down 1 target every 2 seconds and I take 10 damage from each target each second then:
2 x (50+40+30+20+10) = 300 damage.

If I take down all 5 targets at the same time after 5 seconds and take the same amount of damage per target as before, then:
5*5*10 = 250 damage

250 < 300


The reason why AoE is preferred over Spike damage is that it is significantly faster. You can deal large amounts of DPS to a mob, but you can't actually deal much more DPS to single targets without a lot of the damage being unnecessary.
Speed is everything in PvE. It is how performance is measured.

The AoE nukes don't do much less (usually the same) as single target spikes. But they hit more enemies. Therefore, more enemies die in roughly the same amount of time.

Quote: Originally Posted by Xenomortis

Maths!

5 Targets:
If I take down 1 target every 2 seconds and I take 10 damage from each target each second then:
2 x (50+40+30+20+10) = 300 damage.

If I take down all 5 targets at the same time after 5 seconds and take the same amount of damage per target as before, then:
5*5*10 = 250 damage

250 < 300


The reason why AoE is preferred over Spike damage is that it is significantly faster. You can deal large amounts of DPS to a mob, but you can't actually deal much more DPS to single targets without a lot of the damage being unnecessary.
Speed is everything in PvE. It is how performance is measured.

The AoE nukes don't do much less (usually the same) as single target spikes. But they hit more enemies. Therefore, more enemies die in roughly the same amount of time. I love how you say i'm wrong, when your argument is FOR spikes which is what I put. That is an aoe spike and thus is for my argument that spiking will cause less damage to yourself. I never said you needed to solo spike 1 monster at a time but it is used as an example. Not to mention most monsters will never ball up unless in a coordinated human group. Which for our purpose was hero/hench.

Run around and kill monsters with aoe degen, then spike 1 by 1. You'll take less damage spiking. If you can spike down multiple monsters at once, then yes that will move the favor to spikes even more.

Spreading damage evenly is pointless, spiking huge groups at once is good (but hard to coordinate unless in a human group). So spiking will always come out ontop.

Quote: Originally Posted by MercenaryKnight I love how you say i'm wrong, when your argument is FOR spikes which is what I put. That is an aoe spike and thus is for my argument that spiking will cause less damage to yourself. I never said you needed to solo spike 1 monster at a time but it is used as an example. Not to mention most monsters will never ball up unless in a coordinated human group. Which for our purpose was hero/hench. Well ok, you can redefine things so it appears you win an argument.
It might have worked too, but:

Quote: Originally Posted by MercenaryKnight If you spike down 1 target your only taking damage from now 9 enemies. So for general pve spiking is what you want to do. You take a lot less damage when you can spike down more foes quicker. Which was responding to:

Quote: Originally Posted by Div

I'm curious about your rationale for wanting a single-target caster spike in PvE. Given no healing mobs, isn't it better to do 250 damage to 6 different monsters than 1000 damage to one monster? And given this whole thread is responding to this:

Quote:

Originally Posted by Kokuyougan What is the best single target caster spike? Counting things like corpse explosions, but not things like AoE or minions. However a lot of your post is... well wrong. Mobs have a tendency to bunch up. AoE can blow a lot of them up. After that it's just dealing with the few left over - a trivial task for any team. It certainly doesn't take much coordination to get enemies to ball up. If it did, running AP-MoP would be a lot harder than it really is. And you advocate AoE degen with single target spikes? Why? Degen is a pathetic 20DPS max. Now, there are cases when pressuring groups to keep their healers in line and you spike enemies down is a good idea, but you need to be quick and really I could only recommend it for significantly harder places (i.e. Slaver's HM). Otherwise, you could do things much quicker. Even then, you're pressuring with a lot more than a mere 20 DPS. Spiking generally refers to a large amount of single target damage. At least, that's what appears to be the focus of this thread and what is given by wikis. Of course I can spike a lot of damage across a lot of enemies, but that is often regarded as a nuke and with stuff like MoP, that becomes continuous pressure (just very high) until the target is dead. Perhaps we need to agree on the term "spike".

Quote: Originally Posted by Xenomortis Maths!
5 Targets:
If I take down 1 target every 2 seconds and I take 10 damage from each target each second then:
2 x (50+40+30+20+10) = 300 damage.

If I take down all 5 targets at the same time after 5 seconds and take the same amount of damage per target as before, then:
5*5*10 = 250 damage

250 < 300 Your "maths" is meaningless if you just pull the bolded numbers out of thin air. That 5 seconds number has no relation to your first example.

Watch;
"If I take down all 5 targets at the same time after 7 seconds and take the same amount of damage per target as before, then:
5*7*10 = 350 damage

350 > 300

:\

Clearly if you can kill the mob in x seconds either by spiking or by aoe then spiking will result in less damage taken by you.

Quote: Originally Posted by BlueNovember

Your "maths" is meaningless if you just pull the bolded numbers out of thin air. That 5 seconds number has no relation to your first example. Agreed. But I tried to come up with something that actually seems reasonable.