Guild Wars 2

I am new to guild wars 2 and I don’t know what to build I should do for my Mesmer. I like PvE a lot in this game, but I also would like to do some WvW from time to time. Is there a build out there for a player like me? Or are the builds out there are just for straight PvE or PvP/WvW?

PvE and WvW are pretty broad. By PvE do you mean “high end” content like dungeons, or just general stuff? By WvW, are you after a build to run with a zerg or a build for solo/small group roaming?

By PvE, I mean like dungeons and by WvW I mean running with zerg.

At the moment Mesmer dungeon builds merely involve conjuring off-hand Phantasms (and only using MH Sword, as Sceptre can replace Phantasms with Clones) and providing reflect support. Zerg Mesmers again mostly provide support through reflects, group invisibility and portal bombing.

For stats you want Berserker or Assassin. Either works fine, the latter is slightly better for reflects.

look at metabattle site for mesmer builds

There are a couple variations of meta builds for dungeon running. Zerg Mesmer, on the other hand, is an unforgiving job that sucks to play. You’re literally only there to drop portal and veil. You can’t do any good damage, you can’t do any good disruption, and you can’t really do any good support. Until chrono comes out, go ele if you want to Zerg, don’t waste your time on Mesmer.

What about traits and stuff like that? Are they important? Or I can just upgrade them to whatever I like? Or is there a build path too?

You can re-trait anytime you want when you’re out of combat, you can unlock everything when you hit lvl80.
The builds for mesmers are heavily trait-focused, what kind of traits you took will decide the build’s playstyle. If you copy metabattle build, it’ll work. If you want to make your own, it’ll work, too, maybe slower, but gw2 open-world pve is easy, dungeons are easy, low-level fractals are easy.. As long as you don’t make a reaally bad build (like using power weapons with condition gear), you can casually play it.

For WvW, you should wait until you’re lvl80 with exotic gear (weapons, armor, trinkets), as although there is upscaling mechanism, it’s… well.. you better don’t trust it too much (You can get insane stats when “exploited” with selected gears, but mesmer is too trait dependent to be worth.)
BUT! Mesmer in (pug) zergs is only there for your ~4 utility skills (Time Warp, Veil, Nullfield/Feedback, sometimes Portal), you will do close to zero damage to the enemy with your weapon skills.. You’re pretty much a Veilbot.
If you want to try WvW as a high-damage caster, I would say try Ele/Necro, they are both needed and strong.

In WvW zergs, right now we have two, somewhat overlapping, roles. First is for Veil/Portal. Second is for burst damage to take down enemy squishies.

You can chill in a PUG zerg, but you’ll probably not actually accomplish much.