Disable

From Guild Wars Wiki

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To disable a skill is to make that skill unavailable to use. A skill can be disabled permanently or temporarily based on the skill's description and your circumstances. Knowing which skills cause your other skills or themselves to be disabled will help you put together your build effectively. Also, knowing what skills disable a foe's skill(s) will help you in putting together a good Shutdown build.

All skills have very specific wording to describe exactly what they do. Disable is a specific term that differs from other similar terms (such as Fail, Interrupt, and the term cannot). Another similar term that skills refer to is recharge time. A quick note: skills that decrease recharge time do not affect disabled skills.

The following information refers to skills with the specific word disable in their description.

1 Cause and Effect of Disabled skills
2 Skills that disable

[edit] Cause and Effect of Disabled skills

A skill can be disabled due to the following:

Circumstances or location (you)
Effects of a skill on a foe
Effects of a skill on your other skills
Effects of a skill on itself

[edit] Circumstances or location

If your skill bar contains a PvE only skill and you enter a PvP arena, that skill will appear grayed out.
If you equip a skill that requires a specific weapon and do not equip the correct weapon, that skill will be grayed out. For example: You cannot use Savage Slash (a Sword Attack) while wielding a staff.

[edit] Effects of a skill on a foe

Some skills cause a foe's skills to be disabled for a certain amount of time. If the skill specifically mentions that it will disable a foe's skill for an "additional amount of time," then that time will be added to the normal recharge time of the disabled skill.