There are three basic types of long term spells in the game.  Ones which create
enchantments, hexes and conditions.  Enchantments are friendly spells with a
lasting duration.  They often heal or protect you in some capacity, but can
have other uses.  Hexes are usually put on you by enemies and have one harmful
effect or another.  Conditions are the easiest to describe.  They usually cause
health degeneration, but here is a list.

Health Degenerating Conditions:
Bleeding  - 3 arrows.  Most skills which cause bleeding have a long duration.
Burning   - 7 arrows.  Burning is far more painful than bleeding, but shorter.
Diseased  - 4 arrows.  Medium duration, spreads to nearby creatures of the same
type.
Poison    - 4 arrows.  Poison has a rather long duration.  It can is most
commonly seen with 4 arrows, but certain types of swamp areas inflict a type of
poison which is less potent.  Swamp Water I believe is the name.

Non-Health Degenerating Conditions
Blind     - You will “miss” with 90% of your physical attacks.  Also increases
the rate of “stray” shots from ranged weapons.
Crippled  - You move a great deal slower.
Dazed     - All of your spells are interrupted from any physical damage.
Casting times are increased by 100%.
Deep Wound- You maximum health is reduced by 20%.  All forms of regaining life
other than regeneration is reduced by 20% as well.
Exhaustion- Caused by yourself on several high powered skills, particularly
Elementalist ones, Exhaustion greatly reduces energy regeneration of depleted
energy.  I am not yet sure exactly what the rate is, or when it wears off, but
this is annoying.
Weakness  - Your base damage is reduced by 66.6%.  This goes directly off of
your real damage, before enemy armor is factored in.  Because of this, you will
do even less damage than this.

—-
Armor
—-

Speaking of armor, it is needed.  There are five pieces of armor: Head, Chest,
Hands, Legs, and Feet.  Characters can also carry a shield.  Armor ONLY
protects the area of the body it logically covers, though shields have their
armor added to all parts.  Thus, you must always try to keep yourself
completely armored.  Hit ratio’s, however, are larger on some areas than
others.

Head - takes 12.5% of all physical attacks.  Percentage goes up if enemy is on
higher ground than you.  The arcs of some bows have an easier time of
headshotting than others.  As headgear does not have a “special” armor bonus,
like most armors do, you will often take more damage here.  Others have
suggested that in addition to this, a headshot from an arrow is an auto-
critical.
Chest - takes 37.5% of all physical attacks.  As you can see, the chest takes
more physical attacks than any other area of the body.  The chest also takes
all of the direct damage spells.  These are spells which have no projectile
animation and which do not cause damage over time.  Spells like this would
include Inferno and Deathly swarm.
Hands - takes 12.5% of all physical attacks.
Legs - takes 25% of all physical attacks.
Feet - takes 12.5% of all physical attacks.

Perhaps more important than where you get hit, is how much protection armor
gives.  At Armor Level [AL] 60, you take the “real” damage of what someone
attacks for.  You take more than that if you have less AL, and less than that
if you have more AL.  Here are a few samples of how much damage you will take
based on a percentage in terms of the real damage.

AL   Damage %
————–
0    283%
5    260%
20   200%
30   168%
40   141%
50   119%
60   100%
70   84%
75   77%
80   71%
85   64%
100  50%
110  42%
120  35%

As you can see, ten armor can make a huge difference in this game.  Monk,
Mesmer and Elementalist armor cap out at 60, though they can have minor bonuses
against a particular type of damage as well.  Necromancers cap out at 70,
Rangers at 75 [or is it 70, I’ll have to level my ranger ;P] and Warriors at
85.  On top of this, shields max out at 16 defense.  So the maximum defense
which can be reached without the aid of any skills is 101.  With skills, you
could easily surpass 200 AL, although, I am at this time uncertain if there is
a point where defense stops adding up.

—
Terminology
—

Aggro - Aggravation range.  The smaller circle on your compass.  Most enemies
which get in this circle will attack you.
AL - Armor Level.  This is the defense on your armor.
AoE - Area of Effect, this usually refers to Elementalist skills which effect a
large area.
Body Blocking - Standing in front of something so it can not get around you,
and eventually attack you, so that it doesn’t attack someone else.
DoT - Damage over time, often refers to Mesmer or Necromancer skills which
cause health degeneration.  Conjure Phantasm is the typical example of this.
Ecto - Refers to a Glob of Ectoplasm, a material for Fissure armor which falls
in the underworld
Farm - To kill the same monsters over and over, in hopes of getting good items,
money, or experience.
FoW - Fissure of Woe, accessed from the Balthazar Statue in the Temple of the
Ages when your country has the favor of the gods.
HoH - Hall of Heroes, a place you get to after winning several consecutive
battles in the Tomb of Primeval Kings.  Should you win, you might get a
Celestial Sigil.  This place determines the favor of the gods.
LFG - Looking for Group
LFP - Looking for Party
Nerf - To make a skill [or build] less effective by patching the game in an
update.  Not frequently done in Guild Wars, but overly done in say, Diablo II.
Nuker - Someone who can deal a large amount of damage, often to large groups.
Usually an Elementalist, but can be a Mesmer or Necromancer or well.
PUG - Pick up group.  Something to avoid at all costs if you can.  There seems
to be a rule that any random group needs one complete jerk in it.
PvE - Player vs Environment/Enemy - The cooperative areas of the game all fall
under this category.
PvP - Player vs Player.
Runner - Someone who runs other players from on town to another, often for a
fee.
Shard - Refers to an Obsidian Shard, a material for Fissure armor which falls
in the Fissure of Woe
Shutdown - A Mesmer, or on rare occasions a Necromancer, who specializes in
preventing enemies from casting spells.
Sigil - Celestial Sigil.  You need this to purchase a guild hall, they can be
bought from Sigil Traders, or won in the hall of heroes.
Spike[r] - Spikers are generally air Elementalists or fragility Mesmers.  The
concept involves doing huge damage to one target rapidly, in hopes that the
target is unable to get healing fast enough to recover.
Tank - Someone who gets hit a lot, generally a warrior, sometimes a ranger.
ToA - Temple of the ages.  When a country has the favor of the gods, the
underworld and fissure of woe can be accessed from here.
UW - Underworld, accessed from the Grenth Statue in the Temple of the Ages when
your country has the favor of the gods.
WTB - Want to buy
WTS - Want to sell
WTT - Want to trade [for an item, as opposed to money]
Zone - Zoning is when a person enters the next area, which pulls your entire
party into it.  Often phrase as “Can I zone”  or “I’m going to zone us”  which
usually means, grab any items you want right now.