indure

Thought I might start a post to theory-craft how guardians can best gear/spec/combat against the new Agony mechanic that will be present in Fractals of the Mists dungeon. The information for the update can be seen here.

From the little information known: Agony will act as an unavoidable debuff that stacks in intensity and will degen health at a percentage overtime. So hypothetically it will start at 1% health per tick, and will gain in intensity until it exceeds the player's healing potential and kills the player.

Anet will be implementing special gear, called Ascended Gear that will have infusion slots that can be used to help mitigate the damage caused by Agony. This of course will be the primary mechanic players use to combat Agony, but it is not the only one. If we take the gear out of the equation, the most straight forward way of combating against Agony is by having low life and high regen; enter the guardian, a class specifically design to do just that. The guardian has the lowest base health in the game and the highest self healing, so it is uniquely design to combat Agony.

Looking at the current meta builds for the guardian, most have no emphasis what so ever on +healing power and heavy interest in Vitality/Toughness. I personally think that this is going to change for the new dungeon. Perhaps I am over thinking the Agony mechanic, but if Agony is going to be as challenging as Anet makes it sound, then having both Ascended gear and gear that minimizing Vitality and maximizes Healing Power is going to be important. I would recommend purchasing/crafting some cleric gear now, because this gear might shoot up in value after the patch is implemented.

Would be interested on hearing any further thoughts or feelings on the topic from any other Guardians.

For sPVP you can rune your six armor slots: head, shoulders, chest, hands, legs, and feet. And you can rune your breathing apparatus with a 7th rune. Does this rune have a persistent effect on land or is the rune only active when the player is underwater?

I didn't get to play the second beta event as much as I wanted to, but I got a couple of hours in and tried to test if combo "fields" stack. For example if a Guardian drops a symbol (light field) and uses Purging Flames (fire field), will the finishers gain effects from both fields. Since I didn't have time to fully test it, I can only give my own expereince, but it seems that combo fields don't stack and the finisher is only effected by the last created field.

I used the Hammer and tested Mighty Blow on fire/light fields, and I would either get Might or Retaliation, but never both, depending on which field was placed last.

My first question: Has field stacking been proven to exist (and Mighty Blow is a bug), or do fields not stack effects?

Second question: If fields don't stack, do you see this as a further problem with symbols, since IMO light fields are one of the most worthless fields and a guardian could seriously gimp his team by placing one next to his party?