Guild Wars 2

IGN: Lanthyron
Playstyle: PvE (mostly) / sPvp (sometimes, rank 40 atm)
Server: Dzagonur
Experience with thief: Playing thief since about 4 months (and started about 4 months ago, i dont play other classes much ^^), Imo i have a lot of experience in dungeons + fractals, basic knowledge in sPvP (kiting, stealth / blind finishing etc.) and just enough experience to know whats going on in WvW – i dont play alot there. I use d/d + sbow for PvE, d/p and condi for sPvP and WvW.

So I started playing around 3 months ago, maining thief ever since. I got a little bored of the thief and decided to insta-80 a mesmer with the ToK i had.. Now i am sitting here with a level 80 mesmer and no idea how to play him ^^

I thought i would try this build from metabattle for the personal story and some dungeons to start, but i got confused very quickly with the phantasms, no main-hand weapon for second build set (kitten?) and so on. So what i am looking for is:

-A not too hard to play mesmer build for starting off and gathering some experience with the class.
-Some general mechanics of the class (like bursting combo finishers in smoke screen / black powder fields at thief for example)
-Situations in which i should swap weapon sets / slot skills

I think I will do PvE only for now.

Sorry if something like this already exists (i couldnt find anything on the net) + thanks in advance

Ty for the answers so far. To be honest im just trying to get gold atm ^^. So guess i will try some of the options with a sample ~100 bags each and see how much gold i get per option.

Do the drops depend on magic find? So should i stack perseverance to get better drops?

So i am curious how you can get the most money out of the Embroidered Coin Purses from the Silverwastes Bandit Chests, or loot bags in general. I have tried googling and asking players ingame, but there were lots of different opinions (some were sure that its best to open them on level 45, others said on level 80. Same with if it depends on magic find, which gear to salvage etc. ) And at this point i am just curious and confused if there is 1 best way / a good and proven way to handle the loot from them.