I personally chose Mesmer as my first toon, and even til this day he is still my main. My friends always said something along the lines of “oh my, you didn’t choose an easy class as your first character huh?.” I also have a friend who mains ele, and she says that Mesmer is too hard for her.
PvE/Dungeon/Fractals:
I think people say mesmers are hard [to play] because they deal weak damage. Period. You don’t run to a Mesmer asking them to do damage. Warriors can deal 45k+ damage ez. You’d be lucky to even deal 4k damage (and that’s with 25 stacks of might and 25 stacks of vulnerability). You need to understand that the Mesmer’s role is mostly support/utility.
PvP:
pvp is all skill based. but imo memser is a class that is hard to be good at in pvp. yes there’s the ‘cheese’ build (PU) but even with that build it requires knowledge and patience with cooldown. also, thieves are one of the hardest counters, if not the hardest counters to a Mesmer. Mesmer is all about ‘good for me, bad for you,’ well a thief can swap all those boons and conditions on them in a heartbeat. however confusing a thief is easy as well – when they go stealth, go stealth and stand still, they will think you’re an illusion.
WvW: I hate wvw as a Mesmer, you’re basically a scout and sole purpose is for portal.
I would say picking a Mesmer as your first class would be great! why? because they ARE weak. because they ARE hard to play, and survivability IS difficult. you WILL level slow, you definitely will struggle a little. but in the end it’ll all pay off, because now you know how to play a class that deals little damage to a single target. people who say leveling a Mesmer is slow are people who played a different class before a Mesmer, I picked a Mesmer as my first class, so I didn’t know I was leveling ‘slow’. BUT! Mesmer, imo, is the ‘jack of all trades, and a master of none (except illusions)’ – they can go power or condi, they have group stealth condi clear and, stab, CAN be mobile, range/melee
I’m not saying don’t pick a Mesmer, I’m just trying to be as realistic as possible.
