Map hopping?

I'm trying to get Realm-Portal Spiker to finish off Shadow of a Shadow. I'm lucky to get one spike each event. So, I read that map hopping was the way to go, to try to get into other instances so I can do the event more often

From what I've seen, it involves simply going to the character select screen then back in. However, I always end up back on the same map instance. I tried bringing up another toon between logging out and back in and got the same map again.

So, am I missing something? Is map hopping actually not a thing?

Most of the time, logging to character select won't drop you on a different map IP. If the map is heavily populated at that moment, then sometimes it'll work; if not (which is often the case for PoF maps, even during meta events), then you'll just end up on the same instance. What you can do is look on the LFG (specifically in the Desolation subcategory) for squads advertising for portal spiker. Once in the squad, you can just right click on the commander's name (or on another person on their instance) and join them in their instance. You might not see such a listing every time the event is up, but I see them up there semi-frequently.

Edit: There are also a couple of things you can try to increase your chance of getting onto a different map instance after relogging, such as not representing any guild with other players, setting your status to Invisible, and "guesting" to another server via the character select screen. But, again, those won't work every time.

Thanks. That's helpful.

A while back, they made it so your character actually stays in the world for about 10 seconds after logging out, so logging back in just puts you back. If you want to rely on logging out, you need to wait the 10 seconds, or you can switch characters to force the other out. You can additionally guest to the popular servers to influence which instance you're in. For populated maps, those servers generally have their own chain of instances.