Spectral Agony

Spectral Agony is a monster skill that can only be used by Mursaat, Jade Armors and Jade Bows. Mursaat cast it as a skill, but Jade inflict it to an unaffected character with each hit in combat.

Analysis
Spectral Agony can very quickly kill an unprotected character. To make things worse, Mursaat and Jade enemies will use this skill frequently - especially upon being initially aggroed. The only way to protect against it is infusion. Infusing your armor will reduce all of the effects of Spectral Agony to very manageable levels.

Spectral Agony was changed in a previous patch, but the in-game description does not reflect this. Our own analysis on damage follows:

1 The total damage done is the total health lost due to direct damage and health degeneration over Spectral Agony's 5 second span. 2 Health degeneration is subtracted from regeneration to find the actual health "balance." A character cannot actually suffer from more than 10 net health degeneration (or benefit from more than 10 net health regeneration). 3 Assumes an effective net penalty of 10 health degeneration.

The exact slowing effect of Spectral Agony is unknown. When wearing a fully infused set, little or no slowing is experienced. With each piece less, a character suffers from progressively worse slowing.

Spectral Agony's direct damage ignores armor like Obsidian Flame and Crystal Wave. This means infusion and protective skills such as Protective Spirit and Shelter are the only defense. Any infused piece of armor is effective as another.

Shields which feature damage reduction cannot reduce the damage done by Spectral Agony, as shields and armors featuring such damage reduction affect only physical damage as of the 7/13/06 update.

Spells that reduce damage taken such as Healing Hands and Life Sheath are triggered by the direct damage of Spectral Agony and therefore can counter that damage, but not the health degeneration. This is in contrast with the skill's description stating that the target "loses health" rather than taking damage.

As Spectral Agony is not a spell, it will go through anti-spell skills such as Spell Breaker, Shadow Form, Obsidian Flesh and Vow of Silence.

This is possibly the strongest monster skill in Guild Wars possessed by enemies (excluding end-game bosses or critical-plot-point bosses that use monster skills, such as Mallyx in Nightfall or Shiro in Factions) As such, if hunting Mursaat is your goal, gain infused armor from a Seer or bring a minion master with enough minions to distract the Mursaat.

If you are hit without infused armor, you can still survive. Change your focus to healing right away and get the party's healer to help. With enough quick reaction, you can save yourself from it. Be warned however, that this means that you'll be left vulnerable for a time while healing, as well as it takes a degree of luck for this to work, especially when several Mursaat are attacking. In the end, only fight with enough bodies to act as shields (minions from a minion master preferably) or with a company of heroes/henchmen/players with infused armor.

If you have the Factions campaign, Protective Spirit paired with Spirit Bond can completely counter the damage effects of Spectral Agony, and provide a net health gain.

The final word on Spectral Agony is that when fighting Mursaat or Jade, make sure you're wearing a fully infused set of armor.

NPCs
Heroes always have 5 infused pieces of armor, even if you have no infused parts, and this is not based on level. Pets are considered to have 5 infused pieces of armor. Minions are never infused, nor are Spirits, and are often targeted because of this. All other NPCs, however, such as King Ironhammer and even the Mursaat themselves, are not infused and therefore susceptible to it. Mursaat are also notoriously hostile to anything around them: lure them near other monsters, and if left to their own devices, they will activate Spectral Agony and clear any enemies not allied to them in short order.