You have powerful debuff spells and your gaze can also do some good debuffing.
1:Intimidating Glance - intimidate as swift if you're staring them.
3:Manifold stare - trigger painful stare again
5:maybe spell focus
7:fatiguing stare
9:Manifold stare
I'm planning on going with disorienting stare at lv3.
This lets me stare them reducing their attack and will save.
Next round I can swift demoralize them reducing their attack and saves, and then cast a spell that round too that has a high chance of working putting on more debuffs.
Interesting!
I couldn't find the Intimidating Glance feat/ability. Linky?
But onto your question, your Stare ability to reduce will saves and your Mesmrist Trick can go a long way to grant debuffs/utility for your allies, especially if you end up getting a SoS Wizard for a buddy >:)
Beyond that, the Mesmerist can get some decent spells, just recently I cast a Murderous Command on one mook in a surprise round combined with a bluff check for good effect. Almost, almost got a ready made traitor XD
The thing is that the Mesmerist gets so few spells per day that unless you only combat for ~3-4 rounds per day, you will have to rely on something else.
That said, Hypnotic Stare/Daze is a pretty good use of your actions, once per enemy.
get blinding stare at level 7 and you'll be good.
Because of how the damage of painful stare works it's always better to attack your target if you have nothing else to do, but it's fine to trigger on allies attacks.
levels 1 and 2 you'll be using daze a lot.
levels 3, 4, 5 and 6 attack with a cross bow or cast some spells. These aren't very good levels for a mesmerist.
levels 7+ you have more spells and your stare debuff is very good, you'll be very effective after this point.
feats
1 realistic likeness
3 whatever you want
5 whatever you want
7 blinding stare or confusing stare
For bold stares I like timidity at 3, it doesn't scale will but it's good at reducing enemy damage.
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Consider two archetypes-
Umbral Summoner has the ability to summmon shadow monsters, that last minutes per lvl.
Many people would argue that since the Summoned monsters have the 'shadow' template they are mechanically weaker- they are shadow conjurations. Because of that, people look down on this "summon" ability as many other classes are "better" at summoning.
Best case- you have monsters at your disposal that scale with your level.
Worst case- they're distractions. Expendable distractions.
At 5th, you become Invisible to the target of your stare, until you or your summons make hostile action towards them. Get one foe to completely ignore you while you focus on other enemies.
Enigma get the ability to become invisible to the target of their stare, and get sneak attack. The stare isn't as strong.
Still, something to consider.
Vexing Trickster already legal in PFS?
Vexing Trickster already legal in PFS?
yes
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I have found the limiting factor for the mesmerist is the number of spells. Everything else is awesome. The strength of the class is what you can do with free or only swift actions. Even before spells with Stare, Intimidation, painful stare + mainfold stare, and tricks you are debuffing, doing damage and buffing without any standard actions.
I like the eyebiter archtype because it has extra offensive options which save spells. They can also be used through a conductive weapon. Personally I like a Heavy Wrist Launcher but mostly for style a crossbow/hand crossbow or whip are better.
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The swift action economy gets tight. Sickening Blistering Invective is a good first round for a mesmerists that saves you the swift action and stacks debuffs. The other 2 things that compete are Bouncing Trick and Reflexive Trick immediate actions.
My mesmerist tends to hit with the big spell round 2 setting it up in round 1 and intimidating in round two before the spell.
Retraining out of Intimidating Glance when you get more rider effects on painful stare is a reasonable plan of action.
Stare round 1 and cast daze or use a wand or aid another.
round 2 intimidate and use your big debuff spell.
I was worried about not having enough swift actions for Intimidating Glance. Since you need to Stare first, you can't use it until the second round (unless you managed to Stare out of combat, which is definitely possible.)
It's a great 2nd round followup though. You're now looking at effectively a +5 bonus to enchantment spell you hit your target with one the second round. That is disgusting.
*EDIT*
Also, another great option for Mesmerist is the trait Two-World Magic to pick up Acid Splash. This gives you a very effective and unlimited way of activating your Painful Stare for yourself.