Bloodspike

Bloodspike is a PvP team build consisting of up to 8 Necromancers using Blood Magic spells such as Angorodon's Gaze and Vampiric Gaze to deal heavy damage to an enemy team in small windows of time. Unprepared opposing teams will have a difficult time defending against this. To compensate for the lack of dedicated healing roles, each Necromancer brings a different defensive elite, along with skills of the same attribute. For example, one Necromancer might bring Word of Healing, a second would bring Restore Condition, while a third brings Divert Hexes.

This team build was mainly used prior to the April 5th, 2007 update (and later the November 13th, 2007 update) which changed Soul Reaping's functionality. Before the first update, Necromancers gained energy from any spirit's death via Soul Reaping, allowing bloodspike teams to use their energy-expensive skills with little drawback. A bloodspike team typically included a Ritualist that would constantly create new spirits to trigger Soul Reaping's effect with. After this update, Soul Reaping no longer triggered energy gain for the death of spirits. The lack of energy return makes current teams utilizing the bloodspike tactic much less efficient.

Core build

Metagame variant

/
File:Ravenous Gaze.jpg Ravenous Gaze File:Blood of the Aggressor.jpg Blood of the Aggressor File:Vampiric Gaze.jpg Vampiric Gaze File:Angorodon's Gaze.jpg Angorodon's Gaze File:Dark Prison.jpg Dark Prison File:Signet of Agony.jpg Signet of Agony File:Unholy Feast.jpg Unholy Feast File:Iron Palm.jpg Iron Palm	Blood Magic: >12+1+3 Soul Reaping: >12+1 Deadly Arts: >3

Historical variant

/
File:Vampiric Spirit.jpg Vampiric Spirit File:Dark Pact.jpg Dark Pact File:Mark of Subversion.jpg Mark of Subversion File:Vampiric Gaze.jpg Vampiric Gaze File:Angorodon's Gaze.jpg Angorodon's Gaze File:Signet of Agony.jpg Signet of Agony File:Unholy Feast.jpg Unholy Feast File:Augury of Death.jpg Augury of Death	Blood Magic: >12+1+3 Soul Reaping: >8+1 Deadly Arts: >10

Advantages

• Life stealing skills are fairly effective because traditional anti-spike skills, such as Protective Spirit and Spirit Bond, don't protect against it.
• Low recharges on skills enable the spike to be repeated, should it fail or only partly succeed the first time.

Disadvantages

• Even with the Life-stealing healing benefit, Necromancers have a low armor and very few healing capabilities without a dedicated healer/proter, meaning that the team is vulnerable to counter-spikes and high damage in general.
• Most players applying this tactic use the exact same builds and almost exclusively spammable Blood Magic skills; skills such as Complicate, Power Block and the Flux Xinrae's Revenge will certainly cripple a bloodspike team.
• Without deaths during battle, the lack of energy return via Soul Reaping will require efficient energy management.
• Most bloodspike skills have a short effective range, or even touch range, which will result in several Necromancers bunched up around a target. This leaves them vulnerable to any area of effect skills opponents may use.

External links

• Build:Team - HA Ravenous Blood Spike

---