Effective mesmer guide

''Note: this article is intended to provide guidance for experienced characters playing a new mesmer or experienced mesmers looking for additional options. If this is your first time playing Guild Wars, please see the Pre-Searing guide for Prophecies or the Getting started in Guild Wars Factions.''

Synopsis
This guide is divided in two primary sections in order to account for the fundamental differences of roles between a PvE mesmer and a PvP mesmer. This does not mean that the advice in the PVE section does not apply to PVP, just that it is more specific to PVE.

General
While it is well known that knowing your enemy as well as yourself is the path to victory, it is particularly true for mesmers, whose primary function is often to mess with their foes' actions.

So you're a Primary Mesmer
As a primary mesmer, you have access to Fast Casting, mesmer armor and mesmer runes.

After the June 15 2007 Game Update, fast casting now decreases Signet activation time by 3% for each rank.
 * Fast Casting: Enables you to cast spells much quicker than any other profession. This makes your interrupts easier, enemy interrupts on you more difficult, and allows you to cast more spells in a set amount of time.


 * Classic Mistake: Most beginner mesmers forget that Fast Casting applies to any spells, and any spell-oriented profession (monk, elementalist, necromancer and to a lesser extent, ritualist, assassin and dervish) will synergize well with it as a second profession.


 * Mesmer runes & headgear: Enables you to have up to 4 more ranks in a mesmer attribute than secondary mesmers. The advantages should be obvious. Additionally, this profession being one of the least often chosen, even the most powerful runes and insignias are especially cheap.

Do you really need to be a primary mesmer?
Here are some signs that might indicate that mesmer might be more suited as a secondary profession for you:


 * You're repeatedly using the most expensive mesmer skills (e.g. Conjure Nightmare and Panic).
 * In this case an elementalist's Energy Storage could end up being more useful to you than Fast Casting.


 * None of your mesmer attributes is higher than 12 or you're not using Fast Casting.
 * Any of the other professions could make an interesting alternative.

Managing Energy
The mesmer profession gives you all the tools needed to manage your energy level appropriately.

Conveniently, almost all of these are part of the Inspiration Magic line (minus some exceptions like Shame and Ethereal Burden) and will usually give back energy as well as performing another useful task.

Learning to use those skills is one of the things that differentiate normal mesmers and those that perform exceptionally well for long fights.

Four of the five Inspiration Magic elite skills deal with energy management of some sort. In order of popularity:


 * Mantra of Recall
 * Gain (13..25) energy if Mantra of Recall ends.
 * Energy Drain
 * Steals (4..9) energy and gives you twice the amount of energy stolen.
 * Power Leech
 * Interrupts a spell and steals (1..6) energy when foe casts spells while hexed with Power Leech.
 * Lyssa's Aura
 * Steals (1..6) energy when you are the target of an enemy's spell for a number of seconds.

Some other popular and effective inspiration skills:


 * Drain Enchantment
 * Remove an enchantment and gives back (15..23) energy.
 * Power Drain
 * Interrupts a spell and gives back (1..25) energy.
 * Energy Tap
 * Steals (4..6) energy and gives you twice the amount of energy stolen.
 * Channeling
 * Gain 1 energy for each foe in the area when casting a spell.
 * Inspired/Revealed Hex
 * Remove a hex, gain (3..13) energy and copy the hex for 20s. Very useful against hexes that are Monster Skill, as it will remove it, give you energy and recharge instantly (not being able to copy it)
 * Inspired/Revealed Enchantment
 * Remove an enchantment, gain (3..13) energy and copy the enchantment for 20s.
 * Auspicious Incantation
 * Use it before an expensive spell to gain more energy than what the spell has cost you. Basically, using a 25 energy spell under Auspicious Incantation will fill your energy bar. This skill is especially useful when combined with the long casting, expensive elementalist or necromancer skills.
 * Spirit of Failure
 * Make 25% of the target's attack miss, giving you some energy each time an attack miss. Useful in combination with other skills causing blindness or misses.

Besides the Inspiration Magic line of the mesmer, there are 5 skills in other attribute lines that provide energy to the caster:


 * Guilt/Shame (Domination Magic)
 * Stop the next spell casted by your enemy and steal (5..12) energy from him.


 * Ethereal Burden/Kitah's Burden (Illusion Magic)
 * Provides a slowdown on the target and returns (10..20) energy when the hex ends.


 * Symbols of Inspiration (Fast Casting)
 * Returns (1..8) energy for each signet used while under this enchantment.

PvE
Being a mesmer in PvE is mostly around leveraging the faults of the AI:
 * They ignore self-damaging hexes
 * Always flee DoT AoE
 * Always remove hexes, whenever possible

Domination Magic
Backfire is the crux of a anti-caster PvE Domination mesmer. The AI won't stop casting until doing so would be fatal.

Empathy applies in the same way to physical attackers: warriors, rangers and, even more so, assassins. Unlike Backfire, however, the monster will not stop attacking while under this hex.

Use Chaos Storm to apply pressure to casters or to disperse monsters due to the AoE damage it does.

Wastrel's Worry is a disabling dominator's friend. The skill is unique in that it punishes the target who uses skills infrequently, either because they are still recharging or because you have disabled them. Most of the AI in the game do not specifically activate skills to remove it, making it an invaluable hex to bring along. Timing is everything. Power Block (elite), Arcane Thievery/Larceny, Diversion, Psychic Distraction(elite), and Blackout all disable skills, which prevent the target from ending Wastrel's Worry.

When playing a mesmer in Prophecies, bring Wastrel's Worry along to kill enemy bosses. In this campaign, bosses have Natural resistance, which causes a hex to last only 50% of their indicated duration. This means that instead of getting damage from Wastrel's Worry after 3 seconds, the boss gets the damage after 1.5 seconds. Also, some "special" bosses in all campaigns, such as Kuunavang and Varesh Ossa, have natural resistance.

Illusion Magic
Use mobs equipped with hex removal skills to your advantage, by casting Phantom Pain on targets with low health, for they will always try to remove it, triggering the Deep Wound.

AI controlled opponents will always attack in-between skills, therefore, Images of Remorse will often do its conditional damage, making it a cheap damage dealer skill and a quickly recharging cover hex.

Distortion is a good defensive stance that can allow a mesmer to survive attacks long enough to shutdown or kill the foe. Use Spirit of Failure to increases the chances of a miss as well as compensate for the energy cost of Distortion.

There aren't many other Illusion Magic tips that are PvE specific, just apply standard degeneration or anti-physical tactics, as needed.

Inspiration Magic
Most AI controlled enemies will use physical attacks in between skills. Use this to your advantage with Spirit Shackles to shut down energy users (especially Assassins and Dervishes). Consider throwing a little Mind Wrack on top. This is extremely effective against enemies that use attack skills.

Often, you'll know what kind of enemies you're going to encounter in advance. When dealing with elemental damage, you should always consider taking the corresponding protection mantra: Earth, Flame, Frost or Lightning. Which to take is often easily predictable by locations: in the Shiverpeaks it is clearly best to take Mantra of Frost, while in Charr-heavy areas Mantra of Flame is most useful. Mantra of Frost is especially useful in combination with the ranger skill Winter. Add another ranger spirit, Greater Conflagration and you have an extra armor against all elemental and physical damage, plus a reliable energy source.

The same applies, to a lesser degree, to Physical and Elemental damage.

Interrupting
Interrupting is a task that mesmers can do very well in different ways, having a lot of skills to do it.

See the generic Interrupt article for more details about interruption in general and/or the Interrupt skills quick reference for a list of interruption skills (not all mesmer-related).

Interruption skills are always coupled with side effects: for example, causing damage, increased recharge, energy gain, and energy denial. Choosing which one you bring with you can be figured out by some questions:
 * 1) What do you want to interrupt (skills or spells)?
 * 2) How often do you want to do it (based on recharge time, do you want to bring more than one interrupt skill)?
 * 3) What side effect do you want to cause (what does your build do)?

Interrupting is really a science in and of itself, you can theoretically learn the basics, but you'll only become good at it with experience.

Here's a couple of tips:
 * Many monks cast immediately after being knocked down. With the right timing, it becomes very possible to interrupt even 1/4 second spells using this method.
 * When a foe dies, quickly scan for the signet usage animation or tab through enemies, watching the skill monitor. You won't have a lot of time, but interrupting a resurrection is always useful and often a turning point.
 * Watch out for skills timing and fire your interrupt skill right when your foe will use his.
 * This technique is hard to pull off because it requires you to learn and recognize patterns in your opponents' skill usage.
 * For example, a Touch Ranger's life stealing skills have a two second recharge, so when they fire one, count two second and kill them off with Psychic Distraction.

There's basically two interrupting strategies:
 * Shutdown: Concentrate on a foe and prevent him from using any spells/skills.
 * When a single opponent represents a sizable chunk of their strength (often elementalists or monks)
 * Harass: Cycle between foes and interrupt important skills here and there.
 * People are sometimes reluctant to use skills right after being interrupted: harassing opponents uses that fear to reduce their effectiveness by slowing down their skill usage.

Shutting Down
With any shutdown, Wastrel's Worry can be used to punish a player for not using their skills. Casting every 3 seconds, this can often equal or exceed damage caused by Backfire or Empathy, if the target tries to wait it out.

Casual Casters
Casual casters are primary physical attackers using spells as support. Like the infamous Wammos, most assassins and some rangers (rarely).

Arcane Thievery/Larceny are your best tools against those, as they will rarely carry more than one or two spells.

Slow Casters
Most people think three seconds is a long casting time. Double the pain with Migraine and/or Arcane Conundrum. Don't forget to cover those up with quick casting/long lasting hexes.

For fun, you can throw in Overload while they waste an eternity casting their Meteor Shower.

Spammers

 * Diversion is your best friend against spammers of all sorts (Touch rangers etc.)
 * Blackout is also a viable option.
 * Backfire can be used effectively against spellcasters which rely on casting a lot of spells in a short space of time, such as spikers.

Melee Attackers

 * Sympathetic Visage/Ancestor's Visage or Soothing Images to deal with Adrenaline-based attackers.
 * Empathy for generic harassment.
 * Spirit Shackles with Mind Wrack.
 * Warriors will often ignore it (until Mind Wrack hits)
 * Assassins will lose a lot of attack power since it effectively cancels the energy gained through Critical Strike and then some.
 * Rangers (using bow attacks) will lose a lot of the energy needed for their attack skills.
 * Use any of the slow down hexes and kite.

Degenerating
Degeneration is a very potent way to deal with enemies for the following reasons:
 * Degeneration is not damage and not affected by damage prevention (the whole Protection Prayers line)
 * Mass degeneration will often cause people to panic:
 * Melee attackers retreat to apparent safety (although will sometimes stay to try to finish off a wounded foe).
 * If confronted with a mass of hexes they can't deal with, healers over-heal, wasting precious energy.

Illusion Magic is ideal for dealing life degeneration. Builds are usually built around spammable hexes like Conjure Phantasm and Images of Remorse. The rest are picked from various utilitarian skills that cause degeneration with added effects:


 * Crippling Anguish (elite) - Slow down
 * Illusion of Pain - Massive degeneration but heals when the hex ends
 * Recurring Insecurity (elite) - Renewed when foe is hexed
 * Phantom Pain - Cause a deep wound when the hex ends
 * Migraine (elite) - Double spell casting times

Since degeneration is based solely on Illusion Magic hexes, it is a good idea to invest points in Inspiration Magic to be able to use Mantra of Persistence with some efficiency, rendering your hexes much more effective.

Energy Denying
Listed here are skills that cause your opponent to lose energy. It doesn't include skills that cause energy degeneration.

Domination Magic

 * Energy Burn
 * Energy Surge elite
 * Guilt
 * Power Leak
 * Price of Pride
 * Shame
 * Signet of Weariness

Inspiration Magic

 * Drain Delusions
 * Energy Drain elite
 * Energy Tap
 * Ether Feast
 * Ether Phantom
 * Feedback
 * Lyssa's Aura elite
 * Power Leech elite
 * Spirit Shackles
 * Spirit of Failure

Illusion Magic

 * Sympathetic Visage
 * Ancestor's Visage

Fast Casting

 * Arcane Languor (Although the caster hexed with this hex doesn't necessarily lose energy when casting a spell, his maximum energy level decreases due to Exhaustion.)

Choosing a second Profession

 * ''Main article: Secondary professions for a Mesmer

Primary mesmers (especially for its access to Fast Casting) are often combined with other spell-based professions to create wildly different kinds of builds.