User:The Gates Assassin/Really Long Spikes

If you have been directed to this page, you have made an extremely long and wasteful spike. Here is why that fails.

Deffination of a good solo spike
A good solo spike is kind of like a graphing chart. If yours takes 2 seconds (Shock axe for example) and you deal about 300 damage tops, that's a good spike for only 2 seconds. If yours takes 4 seconds and it deals about 400..500 damage, thats really good too. If your spike takes 5 seconds or more, you better have something nice about that combo that seperates it. Some of those exceptions are knocklock, spamability or armor ignoring.

The Deadly Arts Sin nearly completely ignored all armor, and was a really fast ganker. The Asscaster could spam a reletively strong spike every 7ish seconds AND it had a knocklock with it. That made up for the fact that they took a little while to get out.

Remember, a good spike doesn't mean it can solo kill in one spike chain, so don't try to. Make the quickest attack chain possible with as much damage as possible.

Somethings that are key

 * You need a deep wound of some kind. Having a foe lose 20% of their health is extremely valuable no matter how much damage you do.
 * A knockdown or some kind of snare for melee spikes is key. If they can run away from you, your spike is probably going to fail.
 * If you are a caster spike, don't make it obvious. A build that uses Augury of Death + Lightning Surge + Lightning orb + Aftershock or something is just screaming "SPIRIT BOND THIS GUY" and you won't get any spikes in on good players.

Now your spike
Ok let's see some example bad spikes and they are bad.

[build prof=E/A Air=12+1+1 Energy=9+1 Earth=9+1 deadly=3][Augury of Death][Lightning Surge][Lightning Orb][Lightning Strike][Shock][Aftershock][Glyph of Lesser Energy][Air Attunement][/build]

Not sure if these attributes are even possible 0.0. Either way, the spike does about 598 damage, causes a knockdown, and has a deep wound in it. BUT this has one major problem: It is extremely obvious and slow. It takes over 10 seconds to use the entire chain and the damage doesn't start happening until 5 seconds into the spike. As I said before, this is an easy target foe Spirit bond/Protective spirit. There are other flaws in this build, but they are beside the point.

[build prof=A/W Air=12+1+1 ][][/build]

WORK ON THIS LATER