Timekill

Timekilling is the act of killing a foe at a specific point in time, usually in order to control their resurrection time or location.

Because base resurrections happen at a set interval, killing a foe immediately before one of those intervals will force them to resurrect in their base (meaning that the other team will be down a player until that player can rejoin their team, which can create a powerplay situation) and killing one immediately after an interval will prevent them from base ressing (meaning that the other team will have to resurrect them, either by burning a Resurrection Signet or by hard ressing them).

In Guild versus Guild

In Guild versus Guild, timekills are commonly employed to:

• Force backline or defensive midline characters to base by killing them before time. This can often cause a wipe or fallback for the opposing team.
• Dramatically slow down ganks by killing them after time. Of note, forcing a ganking character to 60% Death Penalty will leave them dead at a terrible location until the other team can boost or send someone to res them.
• Prevent foes from basing after a wipe. If an opposing team team is wiping, saving one or two of their members until after time causes the other team to resurrect without them.

In Heroes' Ascent

In Heroes' Ascent, timekills are especially useful due to the presence of the Ghostly Hero. Because Ghostly Heroes are not party members, they cannot be resurrected, and so killing one after time means that they won't rejoin the game until the next resurrection interval.

• On Unholy Temples, a Relic Run map, a team cannot turn in relics at all if their Ghostly Hero is dead, and so they cannot score.
• In Capture Points, a team without a Ghostly Hero loses four pips of momentum, which is the equivalent of half their team. This creates a massive disadvantage for a team with a dead Ghost.
• In King of the Hill, a team without a Ghostly Hero cannot capture the altar, and so cannot score points unless they are already holding the altar. Even in that case, having a ghost killed after time gives other teams a full minute in which they can attempt to cap.

Coordination

It's important your entire team knows in advance (30 seconds seems like a good amount of time) that you are going to do a spike provoking a base res. Your team should make sure to save their hardest hitting skills for this spike. Your melee characters should make sure their spikes are not predictable. The easiest way to do this is using shadow stepping skills such as Death's Charge, but the more common way is to attack characters close to the character you're hoping to force to base res (typically a monk), but not the character itself. This way, when you switch targets from your current target to your main target, the backline doesn't have much time to apply pre-prots to the target. Be wary of spiking too early, as then, the enemy's teammates may be able to resurrect them with Death Pact Signet or Resurrection Signet, voiding this entire strategy.