Thanks to Paul Ott for this wonderful submission. I primarily play a healer for Lords of the Dead (www.lotd.org) and knowing when one of my allies are effected by a hex is vital for me to perform my job correctly. This guide is wonderful in showing you how to recognize when someone is hexed or enchanted.
Guild Wars: A Newbie's Visual Guide to Hexes and Enchantments
This guide is written by a newbie for newbies in hopes others will learn a little something about how to discover hexes and enchantments on themselves, on teammates, and on enemies. Keep in mind that Guild Wars is still in development, so anything stated here could be changed in the future.
What Only You Can See
Any time you are affected by any skill in Guild Wars, the icon representing the skill will appears in the upper portion of the screen. These skills play an important role in the game, so it is essential that you notice potentially deadly affects as quickly as possible.
With the exception of the Nature Rituals of the Ranger profession, all Enchantments, Hexes, Conditions, Spells, Stances, Shouts, Glyphs, everything that is not a Nature Ritual will appear in the upper left hand corner. The Nature Rituals appear in the upper right hand corner. A quick glance at the background color* of the icon will tell you from what profession the skill is, and the order of they were applied is from left one to right. In Picture 1, this particular person was first affected by Earth Attunement (Enchantment), then Channeling (Enchantment), followed by Bleeding (Condition), and finally Ice Spikes (Hex). Positioning your mouse over each icon without clicking will display the information concerning that particular item allowing you to learn more about it if you so desire. This information is not available to your team, although you can quickly inform your team by holding down the Control key and clicking the icon. This will cause your character to announce to the team the name of what is affecting him.
What You and Your Team Sees
In the center of the right side of the screen is the group display. Everyone in your group can view this, and it looks the same to each member of your team. This handy little display contains quite a bit of information that might not be apparent at first. Keep in mind that the colors here are not associated with professions, but stand for different things.
Let's take a closer look by examing Picture 2, taken from the middle of a fight. In this picture, the character Lag Maximus is normal. His bar is bright red, and there are no arrows pointing up or down. Mc Pea Pants, the fourth character, has one purple arrow pointing down. This means he is suffering from one or more Hexes. Sventlana Romanov, the third character, has one purple arrow pointing down, one yellow arrow pointing up, and his health bar is hot pink. We'll tackle these one at a time. Like Mc Pea Pants, the purple arrow pointing down means Sventlana Romanov is suffering from one or more Hexes. The yellow arrow pointing up means he has one or more Enchantments on him. The hot pink health bar means he is suffering from one or more damage-over-time Hexes. Damage-over-time (DoT) simply means he will loses a set number of health each second as long as the Hex lasts. Finally, we see that The Gun character has one purple arrow pointing down, one gold arrow pointing down, one yellow arrow pointing up, and his health bar is light red. The new arrow, the gold one pointing down, indicates that one or more Conditions are affecting The Gun, and the light red health bar indicates a specific Condition: Bleeding. It is possible for health bars to be green also, and this would indicate he was suffering from Poison or Disease. If you're playing a character that is supposed to attend to these types of effects, it is important to keep track of what is happening to your teammates.
What Everyone Sees
Neither of the above methods for keeping track of Hexes and Enchantments are available to your enemy, nor do you have such detailed access to what is affecting them. There is one more method for gathering information. If you spend much time playing, you'll quickly notice that some people have puffy white clouds surrounding them, floating around their upper torso. This indicates a person has one or more Enchantments on them. The observant player will discover more information than that. Less obvious are Hexes. Hexes are indicated by faint black clouds floating around the lower torso. In each of these, the puffy white clouds and the faint black clouds, there is also a color floating around and this will indicated from what profession* the Enchantment or Hex came. Take a look at the following animation and look for a green color floating around the faint black clouds, indicating a Necromancer Hex, and then watch as the character casts a Mesmer Enchantment which will then be indicated by a pinkish color floating around the puffy white clouds.
Although I don't know of any way to determine if someone has more than one Enchantment or Hex of the same profession affecting them, there is a way to tell if they have an Enchantment from two or more professions, or a Hex from two or more professions. Multiple color will float around the clouds will tip you off if they have more than one profession's Hex or Enchantment on them. This second animation segment will hopefully show this. He has both a Mesmer Enchantment (pink color) and a Elementalist Enchantment (orange color). The orange one is slightly more difficult to make out, but it is there if you look for it and not to be confused with the orange glowing end of the wand in his right hand.
There is one more method available to you and your enemies for remaining aware of Hexes and Enchantments. When you target a person, you'll have access to their profession, health bar, the colored arrows mentioned above, and what skill the target uses.
As you can see in Picture 3, the target, Chinga Tu Padre, has one purple arrow pointing down which indicates he is suffering from one or more Hexes, the yellowish arrow pointing up indicates one or more Enchantments, and is using the Flame Burst skill. This information is provided for you in the upper middle section of the screen.
And thus concludes our Newbie's Visual Guide to Hexes and Enchantments. I hope you've enjoyed it, and if you learned anything here, don't worry -- it's ok to be a newbie. ;-)
*Professions and Their Associated Color
Necromancer: Yellowish-Green
Warrior: Orangish-Yellow
Mesmer: Pinkish-Purple
Elementalist: Orangish-Red
Ranger: Teal
Monk: Light Blue
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