Guild Wars 2

The best advice is just to keep at it and try not to get discouraged. Levels 20-39 are a slog no matter how you’re set up, but at 40, the mesmer becomes a totally different class. Deceptive Evasion changes everything. Do some crafting, your personal story, or follow a champion train around Queensdale, anything to get you to level 40 and the next tier of traits.

Some things I tried at your level:

-Five points in Dueling is the most important thing to keep you alive. Critical Infusion will keep you in vigor pretty much constantly. Five more points will decrease the recharge on Blurred Frenzy (with Blade Training), which is key to both doing damage and avoiding it. As an added bonus, Blade Training will give you precision, which means more vigor triggers.

-The Dissipations: Domination V and Chaos V will go a long way to keeping you alive if you like weapons that keep the clones coming (scepter and staff)

-Oof, I definitely benefitted from having Illusionists Celerity as the adept minor trait for Illusions. That definitely hurt low level mesmers. My advice is to just not worry about shattering until you get to 40. Others might disagree, but I just don’t think you can do enough damage without a constant supply of clones. So if you want to use illusions, I’d stick with phantasms, especially Duelist (pistol) and Berserker (greatsword). Ten points in Inspiration for Persisting Images will help them get off a couple attacks and do a bit more damage with the retaliation from Vengeful Images. Empowered Illusions (Domination III) will also help them (and so will the extra 100 power).

Good luck, and again, just stick it out.

If you want to stick with main-hand dagger through the middle levels, 10 points in Spite for Spiteful Spirit and 15 points in Curses for Furious Demise and Weakening Shroud work great in PvE. Run around, pull a few enemies, flash in and out of DS, then stab away. Drop a well if you need to: Suffering to kill and Darkness to protect yourself.