Difference between Curse and Illness?
 

Poison is obvious, and since I'm a cleric I don't need to bother with that resistance.

What are curse and illness, though? The wiki doesn't even mention it. And where's bleeding fit into there?

curse isnt used alot, its icky and mages r the ones to dispel that. and illness is like what zombies give u, its not rlly a common type of DOT, clerics cure them :P bleeding is like illness, its also uncommon, its not rlly known who can undo them, sometimes mages can dispell it and sometimes clerics can cure it. so rlly, DOTs r icky and both mages and clerics undo them depending on what it is ^^

Disease, bleed, and poison damage the player over time. Mob based illnesses are 4 minutes long. These are 'cured' by Clerics.

Curses lowers the player's status; ie. slow movement, lowered defense, lowered dex, etc. These are 'dispelled' by Mages.

So the four-minute decreased evasion, dexterity, attack speed, etc are curses that I can't cure as a cleric?

Looks like that's the attribute I'll buy necklaces for, then. Are you saying 'illness' is the same as bleeding and poison?

Yep. You can classify all damage over time 'debuffs' as illnesses. And those are the only ones a cleric can cure. Some mages seem to think that they can dispell someone taking damage but that's not true.

If someone is red or blue they're under a curse.

Ah, right, forgot that Cure said poison OR illness.

Okay, cool. I'll make sure my necklaces resist curses then. Four minutes of terribly slow attack speed does not a happy hammer user make!

Actually, the ONLY damage over time that a mage can actually dispel is the one from Skeleton Knight.

Clerics will find that they cant "cure" the illness casted by the Skeleton Knight in LS2 (you'll encounter him at level 30), but a mage can actually stop that by dispelling. That's the ONLY time a mage could cure an illness (or bleeding, watever you want to call it).

I have a feeling that it's a bug, but.. that's how it works atm.

But normally, all bleeding / illness are cured by clerics, curse are dispel by mage.

One could argue that it's just a curse powerful enough to wreck your body.
Anyway, thanks. Good to know.

Would fighter's stun and mages fear be considered curse? So would an increase in cure resistance would lower the chance of getting stunned or feared?

i'm not sure about stun/devastate... but drain mind (fear) has a 100% success rate on players, so nothing helps u there.

fear does not work 100% of the time on mobs though, some have resistances and some just plain 'Miss' (without the miss animation). try this on that dragon roaming the FBZs, at lvl 89, Fear[2] hits maybe 40% of the time.