Euro spike

In late 2006, after the release of Guild Wars Nightfall, a few European guilds made a highly defensive spike build with the goal to mitigate damage (via skills like Blinding Surge) and pressure the opposing backline (with Domination Magic) while rapidly spiking the other team out. The build's popularity spread like wildfire, and soon the vast majority of European guilds on the ladder were running the build. Thus the term euro spike was coined, originally denoting a build using domination mesmers with Spiritual Pain. An archive of one of the most popular variants of this build may be found on PvXwiki.

ArenaNet disliked the stale play promoted by this defensive meta, so they set out to nerf eurospike; with changes to Blinding Surge, Spiritual Pain, and Agonizing Chop, eurospike lacked its original punch, so skill bars were changed and the build became varied by team preference. For this reason, "euro spike" was eventually broadened to include all builds that spike while playing defensively.

Rebel Rising, one of the most successful PvP guilds, ran a defensive spike build throughout most of their tournament career, netting them first place several times.