E/any Air Spiker

The Air Spiker is an aggressive Air Magic spike damage build. It is commonly used in Guild versus Guild with many others running variants of this build. Air Spikers are common in almost every area of PvP thanks to their high damage output on single targets.

Attributes and Skills

Equipment

An Insightful Air Magic staff is the standard suggestion. Runar's Brimstone Staff is excellent.
Note: In a synchronized Air spike team, the 20% chance of faster casting speed weapon mod can give the spike target away. It is imperative in such teams that all spikers hit the target at exactly the same time; therefore, it is best not to use it in such a build.

Usage

Cast Air Attunement immediately before an encounter and remember to keep it up.
Choose a target in sync with your party's plan and try to take it out.
Use your spiking skills in the order of how fast they recharge, Lightning Strike and Orb can be spammed indefinitely since their recharge is only 5 seconds each.
Use Gale to control events around your party. If the spike target is running away, you can pin him down with Gale long enough to finish him off with Lightning Orb. If the target is using a long casting self heal like Troll Unguent or Healing Signet, use it as an interrupt. If an enemy is harassing your monk, use it on the enemy to give your monk a breather.
Use Glyph of Lesser Energy to save energy on Lightning Orb and Blinding Flash.
Use Blinding Flash to shut down enemy non-spellcasters.
Air Spells are cheap and fast to recharge, so in general, being interrupted is not a big issue. Beware of Distracting Shot and Diversion however. Also, a well-placed Backfire can kill you in a matter of seconds.

Variants

Replace Invoke Lightning with Lightning Surge, and use it immediately before Lightning Orb for a massive 200 damage spike.
Also for PvP, consider mesmer as a secondary profession and bring Shatter Enchantment or Drain Enchantment to make your spikes more effective, especially to counter skills that reduce your damage like Protective Spirit and Feigned Neutrality.
Aura of Restoration can be used especially in RA as a self-heal and cover Enchantment for Air Attunement.
Windborne Speed and Storm Djinn's Haste can be used for a speed boost. This is especially useful in Competitive Missions.
Invoke Lightning can be replaced with Mind Shock. This allows for a Knockdown.
Vigorous Spirit can be used in conjunction with Aura of Restoration for decent healing whenever you cast your spells.

Templates

 Template Guide

The Skills Template for this build is:
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