Originally Posted by octaviancmb

The "point" of a Mesmer in PvE is the same as the point of any other profession: to destroy monsters. They're *amazingly* effective at it. The problem I see a lot of people have with them is they don't look beyond the "shutdown" archetype. If all you want to do with your mesmer is cripple and kill casters, then sure, you'll be great at it, but you'll be bored by the time you reach Yak's Bend (and Rangers are arguably better at it)!

In the early part of a Mesmer's life, concentrate on killing bosses, because you're stuck with Dominate and Illusion. Once you have enough skills open to you (say around Kryta), your skill bar should be changing based on each mission and each area. Once you're past ascention, your skill bar should change based on each group you're running with (and what you've unlocked).

In my experience, Mesmers use their secondary profession a lot more than other primary professions use their secondaries. But that's okay, because being a Mesmer means you're going to use that secondary profession better and more efficiently than the primary profession, anyway. You'll be casting spells faster, always have energy, etc. Consider the Me/El, who 6 seconds into a battle is already on to his third spell; the (much maligned in this thread) IW Warrior who cannot be hit, does terrific damage, and can still stop casters in their tracks; the Mes/Nec who in addition to absolutely slaughtering groups of monsters, also keeps everyones health and energy high; or finally the Me/Mo who puts out an endless supply of heals (because he's never out of energy, you see) while constantly degenning and/or interrupting the enemy. Yeah, I can see how none of these abilities would interest a group. Nothing at all useful here. And those are just the most obvious builds.

But, you say, you want to use a *Mesmer*, not some *Mesmer/something* hybrid. Why you would want this, I have no idea, since every character I've ever seen is a hybrid character, but anyway. Mesmers, functioning entirely independantly of any other profession, still rule. Their regal ownership of the game is more situational and far more subtle than the more straight-forward classes, however. Consider hexes. A Mesmer can turn both his own and the enemy's hexes into *hundreds of points of damage* by shattering/breaking/getting rid of them. These *hundreds of points of damage* have no visual impact on the game, so you likely will never, ever know a Mesmer is literally destroying whole groups of monsters. I mean, you're hitting the monster with a sword, or casting firestorm on them. Yeah...you know, killing fast... /sarcasm. Consider groups of melee monsters, pause and wonder why they all have those little grey triangles in their health bar, be amazed that your stances are preventing almost every attack/that your Monks are the best you've ever known/the Necro must be up to whatever-it-is-Necros do, but little do you realize the "lowly" Mesmer in your group is keeping the WHOLE GROUP BLIND (while doing lots of damage to them).

Finally, imagine, if you will, a character so good at working with your group that he makes the whole group better. If you can picture such a character, you'll see a Mesmer there.

CMB