With every status, we have visual indicators that we are inflicted, and that we are affected. Poison leaves a bubble trail, shock has electricity flowing through us, and freeze leaves a big ol' chunk of ice at our feet to hinder movements.
Curse is the only status in the game to have a visual indicator (the eye above the head + aura) that isn't telling of the status. It alerts teammates that you are cursed, however it does nothing to help you as a player decipher what is cursed.
In the past, we had an icon on our weapon in our HUD that was similar to the icon that overtakes our consumables (vials, barriers, pills, etc) that alerted us that we would take damage from it. Since the UI update, that visual has been moved onto the weapon wheel, which is only present when you swap weapons.
Because of the weapon wheel's rather distracting nature, I have personally disabled it, and I'm sure many others have too. Because of this, it is impossible to tell what weapons are cursed.
While you can tell your shield health by shielding or looking at the shield bar, I would recommend something similar to be added to the curse status. Here are a few visual clues that could be added to the curse status to know when the current weapon is cursed:
- Replace footprints with curse eyes
- Have the curse eye be closed when an uncursed weapon is held
- Aura only appears when cursed item is held
Like blooming aura or the grasping aura, when the player takes a step, the footstep dust is replaced with a small pink curse eye. This effect only takes place while a cursed weapon is held.
The curse eye opens when the held weapon is cursed, but if a weapon can be used without taking damage then the curse eye above the player will become closed.
The misty cursed aura only is visible on the player when a cursed weapon is held. It disappears when an uncursed weapon is held, but reappears the moment a weapon that is cursed is back in hand. The open eye remains above the player until curse wears off.
Any of these fixes will give a more obvious visual indicator to those of us who can't stand the weapon wheel, while at the same time not intruding on the usefulness of the weapon wheel.
Additionally, make the shield bar pink when shield bash is cursed. It stinks to bash out of danger when you can't attack only to die because your shield got inconveniently cursed without any way to know.
Like you said, some players disable effects, like you disabled your weapon wheel, another nice addition should be implement a weapon hud again, like old hud did, its nice to look at your weapons stats time to time, i do that...