Spells - disablers 1

Calm - Calm seems to be generally underused. It is an easy spell to get off, and easy to work into a fight once you have sufficient mana. Its main purpose is to buy you time, since most guilds don't have a way to remove it from themselves. Using it can save your life if you're on the ropes, or allow you to recharge mana or fully prep your next offensive spell. You can take back initiative.

Calm has 3 levels of success. The lowest is "less aggressive" which actually lasts longer than the second level, "passive." Passive has no effect on PCs beyond what less aggressive has. The "extremely relaxed" messaging is an immobilization which basically never occurs against equally matched PCs.

Mental blast - This is a great spell, and the contest is generally strong against guilds that aren't magic primary. The stun is shorter than dazzle, but the resulting nerve damage is brutal. Nerve damage affects magic use, combat, and hiding. Hitting a thief with some nerve damage basically puts an end to all their hiding shenanigans. Once you have the mana, mental blast can be recast over and over to ever higher levels of nerve damage (since nerve damage weakens the opponent in WvW contests). Note that the nerve damage from mental blast will also make calm and sever thread easier to cast, too.

If you get the max success sleep effect, the fight should be close to over, unless the opponent is a high level barbarian who can reduce your TM to zero by disbelieving your sky lasers.

Dazzle - Make sure you are outside and there are moons up. Dazzle fail is a terrible thing. This spell can stun quite well, though versus some guilds (rangers and barbarians) it just isn't as strong. Double tapping the dazzle is recommended. The first stun results in a balance hit, weakening the opponents SvA contest and making the next cast even more effective. Often, you won't have to prep the second cast as much as the first and you'll still get a longer stun. Dazzle lock is fairly easy to pull off once you get a sense of your stun duration and how fast you can prep at a given mana level.

Versus a tough opponent, repeatedly stunning with dazzle in succession can make them fall down. Watch your mana, this can take a while.

Whole displacement - Another underused spell, this time for good reason. If you are successful, you will teleport the opponent within the room (or to an adjacent room). This results in a very short stun. Generally, this is a good way to waste your initiative and get shot in the face. However, the unbalance from the stun can lead into a stronger dazzle stun if you are quick or your opponent is slow. This can be used against people who have naturally high agility/reflex or stat boosting spells, who would otherwise be impossible to dazzle. The self-cast style of this spell is terrible if your opponent has any sort of ranged attack.