Guild Wars 2

I would like to learn how to be a commander in WvW on my back line hammer rev. Does anyone have tips?

Well the best thing you can do is to follow around a good front line commander.

DtC created a guide a few years ago that is dated now but still has solid information in it:

http://borlis.org/forum/m/7734425/viewthread/6805656-dtc-justices-compilation-wvw-guide

Another dated guide but still has plenty of solid info:

http://www.tinyurl.com/WvW-Combat-and-Tactics-doc

Think it ultimately depends on what direction you want to go. Fight, ppt, havoc, or kinda a mix tag?

Same as Straegen mentioned, its best to get into TS and listen/follow the commanders that tag up, get a feel for what style suites you and apply it. You also get little hints once in awhile about unknown things in wvw relating to siege placement or how to assign duties to certain classes. Free education pretty much.

You’d be surprised of the different styles. I myself am on ebay and followed an Omen guild female commander who had a very easy going style I wasn’t use to. Usually tags are intense and relating the tone of their voice based on the intensity of the fight. A calm female voice seemed to control people a bit better IMO, it was interesting to follow and not annoying

thunderfall.8095:

I would like to learn how to be a commander in WvW on my back line hammer rev. Does anyone have tips?

Sure thing!

Change to melee guardian.

There. You’re welcome.

Follow commander’s and learn from them. Consider their positive decisions and their mistakes. Try to make decisions in your head while following them (don’t backseat drive, keep these decisions to yourself) and see if those decisions would have been good or fatal.

Eg. Commander is about to make a push, you think if you were commanding you would flank. Watch the events unfold, does your zerg wipe, would it have been better if you flanked, or did the commander make the right decision and yours was the wrong one?

You won’t always make the right decisions, no one’s perfect, but it’s important to learn how to visualize the field. What things could cause what outcomes. Mentally train yourself along side other commanders learning from their actual mistakes and learning from your hypothetical mistakes.

After that, the next important step is Teamspeak. Learning what commands to give and when. Waters, stability, etc.

And beyond that, staying alive. As soon as a commander goes down, the zerg is going to fall apart 90% of the time. If you’re still inexperienced with your decisions, at least you can stay alive so that your zerg stays together. If you can’t hold the frontline, you can’t make commands, you can’t drive your zerg. So first and foremost, you need to learn to survive before you learn anything else.

EOTM is an entirely different beast because there’s no Teamspeak and little co-ordination. But with a bit of patience, you can train your zerg to have some discipline. It’s a good training ground to see how effective you are as a commander.

Some tips for getting a zerg to co-operate with you:

• Have a positive attitude. Don’t put people down during a wipe but don’t pretend it didn’t happen.

• Be relaxed, let people feel comfortable around you. If they trust you, they’ll risk their lives with you.

• And remember that just because you’re the commander it doesn’t mean you get to do everything your way. Remember to satisfy your zerg, too. Get them XP, get them fights, show them a good time. It’s important to keep your blob feeling comfortable, confident and fulfilled if you want to have loyal followers.

I’m not capable of tagging in real WvW for personal reasons but I do tag in EOTM a fair bit. A positive morale goes a long, long way. I can’t tell you how many times my zerg has grown instead of shrank during the times we’ve been repeatedly defeated because I was kind to my zerg. People won’t care about losing (to an extent, of course) if they’re having a good time.

I would just like to point out that I love our Wvw crew. Someone new, comes for advice, and he actually gets advice. I think that speaks volumes about the wvw community.

melee rev is ok to command on, but as backline rev, you can naturally only command backline. Which is useful, or you can command a havocsquad with lot of dps and tactics (portals etc.)
for example:
40 man guild with 1 commander faces 2 guilds with 20 man people.
If guilds are equal level, the 2 guilds will win.

So splitting up your numbers will improve effectiveness, unfortunately most commanders in this game are impossible to reason with cuz theyre idiots :P

A good commander is a good follower. Needs to except the strengths and limitations of different classes and the people playing them.Can except wins and failures with calm dignity and respect for other players. Tactics before and during battle comes with experience.So try commanding a bit with a PvE group or a small havoc group in WvW .You won’t really know unless you try. Good luck.

If you have spend your time purely following in wvw in small non blob size and hit silver rank, you will know how a good commander runs.

1. Lead like a selfless fool and waste own gold on sieges
2. Being patient towards everyone and educate people especially new wvwers who have no idea about supplies, those that love to hog sieges with no mastery, etc.
3. Great knowledge of siege placement
4. Great knowledge of combo fields from all classes
5. Toon must be BLING enough so people actually moves their butt when you call for stacking
6. Good decision making, when to fight and when to run. Some fights can totally be avoided or won without actually fighting, by bumping people off cliffs and stuff
7. Great coordination with other commanders
8. Make great use of roamers to destroy siege and repair wall and gates to seal half of enemies behind wall or gate
9. Good talker on teamspeak not in terms of language barrier but in terms of good personality or funny.
10. Know your side’s limit, don’t be that commander that tells the squad we gonna kill the enemies repeatedly only to get owned completely. People will generally keep following as long as they don’t get their butt served on a diamond platter numerous time.
11. Accept that there will be trolls and haters

best tip i can give is record yourself think of a zerg as a ying yang they always rotate in counter active to one another to try hit other one back line.

fields will stay active even if there max charge is achieved be aware of your group pre pulse interval of skills(so if your in a zerg fight they cast a field most last 4 seconds if it been active for 2 seconds it most likely no longer active because it only achieve a max value of kittens Wards are exception of 10 hits) to be able to weed your way threw visual distraction.

break zerg in to 2 types are they “con or are they power” if there con use rev to block with resistance if there power use some form of healing to out heal them such as ele rev druid.

understanding how to destroy a front line you want skill such as nul field(mesmer) or wells(nerco) that rip boons(mainly stab and resistance). it ineffective to try use such skills as wards or CC move to remove stability now that it has internal CD on being removed.

always try to take the high ground in every fight if you cant achieve it should back off try to find a better way to engage. (main reason you take high ground is so your backline has superior targeting in warding game.)

after all that it just practice now your match up remember guild tag how they run you will get good fast.

im sure most of what i said was already covered but i just recapping it.