Guild Wars 2

I recently did a Fractals of the Mists run, got defeated (hey, it happens!), and thought I’d help take some pressure off my group by using a revive orb from the gem store. I revived as one would expect, we beat the fractal, and moved on to the Jade Maw.

Unfortunately for me (and my group), the agony resistance from my back item was no longer being counted toward my AR total. I was almost instantly downed from the Jade Maw’s agony attack. This immediately prompted people to question whether I actually had 45 AR, and with good reason.

Upon closer inspection, I noticed that my back item could not be unequipped (yes, I was out of combat) and my agony resistance had dropped from 45 to 35. I tried removing my other ascended gear and instead of my AR returning to normal when equipping it again, it was as if I wasn’t even wearing ascended gear. I tried removing all of my ascended gear and putting it back on again. This didn’t seem to have any effect on my total AR. This problem persisted until we defeated the Jade Maw and returned to Lion’s Arch.

This isn’t a huge deal if you’re doing lower level fractals but at 40+ (or even 30+), this is a pretty serious bug.

If you die enough times, your armor gets broken instead of damaged.

If it is your back piece that is broken, this will prevent you from receiving any AR that it applies to your total.

I’m aware of how broken armor works and how it doesn’t contribute to your stats. My back piece wasn’t broken.

As I said in the OP, the back piece was effectively fused to my character’s back. I couldn’t unequip it despite not being in combat. I was still wearing it and my AR was reduced by 10. My other stats appeared to be unaffected. This is a pretty significant problem with doing a level 40 fractal when fighting the Jade Maw. The only way I was able to fix this was by leaving the instance after we beat it.