Suggestions for leveling

Started a mesmer last night and looking for suggestions on leveling build/weapons. Would like to play ranged more than melee. Any advice? Don't really care if it's the best or worst dps, looking more at survivability and fun.

P.s. yes I am aware of Snowcrows and Metabattle, both good resources but more focused on end game. I am more looking at the journey until that point for now.

Power builds are generally preferred for leveling and core mesmer tends to do better with power anyway. Mesmers don't have a lot of weapon options available to them, so there are really only two power-based weapons available to a core mesmer: greatsword and sword/x.

You'll probably want to choose domination/dueling/illusions trait lines as chaos is more geared toward condi builds and inspiration is more of a healing/utility line.

Prioritize power, then precision, then ferocity on your gear.

Play around with different utility skills and off-hand weapons for your sword. Mesmers have a lot of cool options and nothing is really critical to have here. It tends to be more situational, for the most part. Although, if you don't have access to a mount you may wish to use signet of inspiration for the 50% passive swiftness uptime and use the focus off-hand as it gives you another 50%-ish swiftness uptime via temporal curtain, which is also a really great area pull in combat! Leveling quality of life is generally improved by having as close to full uptime swiftness as possible!

Good info, thanks for the tips. Will check it out. Appreciate it!

Personally, if I had to go back and do it again I would do this:

Inspiration - Sympathetic Visage, Restorative Illusions, (Last doesn't matter). The main reason is that inspiration will provide you with extra sources of healing on shatters and illusion summoning. In addition, you remove conditions when you summon illusions and when you shatter. While conditions are not super common they are there often enough to be annoying its nice to have the on demand ability to remove fear and poison on you for later meta events and content. Particularly just remove conditions even when knocked down as shatters can be used in that state. This combined with Mirror you can reflect projectiles and heal more often. I just found this made over world experiences more forgiving.

Dueling - Phantasmal Fury, Fencer's Finesse, Superiority Complex/Deceptive Evasion. This is pretty much the sword + critical route. Reduced cooldown on swords and increased damage using them. Evading = Clone spam is fun.

Illusions - Persistence of Memory, Phantasmal Haste/Maim the Disillusioned, Phantasmal Force. Persistance of Memory combos well with Dueling's Phantasmal Fury. Phantasms start with Fury, then upon becoming a clone give you their fury and its a really long amount of fury as well. So, you can pretty much get yourself unlimited 20% crit rate with this set-up.

Then, use Sword/Sword with some phantasm utility skills to spam illusions/phantasms for damage. Likely Longsword for ranged damage if needed and swapping Illusions to Domination (reduced cooldown) as Dueling provides some fury generation on its own.

Also, early game take power builds, then eventually take any stats that improve power/precision. I tried running a condition build through all of the later game content with Chaos and Staff even into Path of Fire and while I pretty much never died due to aegis and ranged combat it was a slog trying to kill anything. Power speeds up those fights so much.

My strategy when leveling a new prof is to swap everythign every X levels. If you're used to ranged gameplay, start staff + GS and pick manipulation skills first (so you get a blink early). At maybe L10, change entirely to sword/shield and scepter/focus, and try out a different type of utility. Change again at L15 or L20. Try one trait line when you first get access, try another when you get two lines.

The more you know about how the prof works, even the "useless" aspects, the better you'll be with it all later. And the more sense you'll see in other people's recommendations (or perhaps, in some cases, the more nonsense, as the case might be).

@Wilster.2985 said:Started a mesmer last night and looking for suggestions on leveling build/weapons. Would like to play ranged more than melee. Any advice? Don't really care if it's the best or worst dps, looking more at survivability and fun.

For leveling build for Power > Precision > Ferocity

You'll want to run something like Sword+Sword / Greatsword

For Utilities you want Signet of the Ether, Phantasmal Disenchanter, Phantasmal Defender, and Feedback. Time Warp as the Elite.

Illusions > Dueling > Domination for specializations.

Mesmer is arguably the only class where all the weapons are well-designed, balanced, and fun. So do try all of them.

For survivability, it's hands down the Staff. However, it takes some time to learn and it doesn't kill as fast as other weapons.

Other ranged choices are scepter and greatsword. Greatsword probably has better DPS, but scepter burst is also great. Scepter also lets you have more options with off-hand item.

Mesmer has great utility skills. But for leveling, some racial skills are also worth looking into, especially those that summon pets to tank and do extra damage.