How do I not suck in POF

Oh actually good players,

I'm having this awful problem of dying everytime I step foot onto the sand of crystal desert and I cant tell if its a me problem or if it's supposed to be this hard. I play a mesmer and I'm not to familiar with all the intricases of armour and the spells i should use, if anyone has any tips it would be GREATLY appreciated.

At this point im going to try tackling the tail end of my story quest in the desert.

This is what happens if you take raid builds from snowcrows (designed only for raids), so you have 0 passive healing, no break stuns and you're dying in 2 hits.What can you do? Create your own build, like Inspiration/Domination/X.Carry a break stun skill.

Generally I found Mesmer clumsy to play in open-world as Mesmer is much easier against a single strong enemy than it is against many „easy“ mobs.

Another point is: mobs in PoF are highly mobile and ranged that makes melee difficult. Running behind the mob often lures more than you can handle.and even they all attack you they are to far apart to be hit by AoE.

• have a long range weapon in one slot, watch out to not lure to many mobs with your clones.
• other classes like ranger/warrior/deadeye are easier

1. Ensure that your build is solid, makes the right choices and has trait lines making picks that syngerize with each other.
2. Failing that, metabattle has a section for open world builds, and
   did a series of builds for story and open world, His mesmer build is really strong and easy to play.
3. Ensure that you are in 100% exotic, level 80 gear. Ensure that the gear all has the same stats and that those stats are picked to leverage the strength of your build. Both links above recommend appropriate stats for their builds. Gearing up in most common stat sets this way can be done for less than 20g,

If you have already done these things let us know and we can help you further

EDIT: @mindcircus.1506 wrote what I did. But first.

But I would like to add

1. You should avoid mobs whenever you can even if you do get a good build set up. Their difficulty level is higher than in the core game but the rewards you get for killing them is more or less the same. Lots of vendor trash.
2. Don't be afraid to ask for help.

did you boost your character? did you play HoT or LW3?

Because after HoT, PoF isn't that hard. The larger aggro range is annoying, but the mobs themselves are a lot less horrible.

You might wanna get some tips from the following topic, or just follow the guide.https://en-forum.guildwars2.com/discussion/30394/open-world-domination-mirage

Take this build and gear, and you are now ready to do all of PoF with ease.

Know the mobs, their skills, animation, and with that what you need to dodge and what can be allowed to hit you. Depending on the build mesmer is all about avoiding as much dmg as possible.If there are ranged mobs in the grp, kill them first, they can get annoying if you let them alive, and with lot of open areas, kiting or using LoS can become difficult for those. If possible use the terrain in you favor.

Like others already said, bring a stunbreak and depedning on what mob you fight condition cleanses as well.

What build/weapons/stats are you using? (you could show us e.g. with http://en.gw2skills.net/editor/)

If you have enough hero points for Mirage, this is the build for you. It's what I use with my mesmer. Mesmer is an active playstyle, but this makes life pretty easy. (Build link is in the video description. I use Mantra of Pain and Phantasmal Defender instead of the 2 mantras shown in the build.)