Guild Wars 2

So I’m new to WvW and have been going on teamspeak to follow the commander on comms.

I often hear the commander say “stab one” or sometimes “stab two”, what do these mean?

Some other questions:

It seems like Guardians, Necros and Eles are the 3 core classes in a zerg with maybe one or two Revs. Are the other classes utterly pointless then in a WvW zerg?

Finally. Is metabattle still a good place to get my WvW builds? I play Guardian and the meta section says AH Frontliner, with celestial armour pieces which I can’t get. Is this build dated or is it still the standard?

Stab = stability.
You want your guardian to use the stability boons(skills that share with other players) when you enter into combat so you don’t get interrupted or knocked down.

For other classes you can have a gank squad. Basically 5 of your squad are on classes like ranger and thief who snipe the back line(elementalists) or commanders. Ranger and thief aren’t really meant to charge in with the zerg.

Classes like warrior and mesmer are also useful. Mesmers for veil and portals, warriors because they are warriors and tough.

Metabattle is a good place to start for tried and tested builds in WvW. You can have variations. As for equipment – get the best you can. As long as you can contribute and stay alive you are helping. Just build up to what is needed. And ask experienced players for pointers. I personally have hybrids of the meta and they work very well, sometimes better.

I wouldn’t say the other classes are “pointless” but guardians, necros, revs, and eles are essential to a zerg and thus the most needed.

Stab one and two refers to the rotation. The first guardian in the party uses their stability when called, and the second one uses it when stab two is called. Stability does not stack in duration thus if 2 guardians use it at the same time, it’s a bit wasted. If the 2 guardians are properly built and time it right, then they can maintain stability most of the time barring corruptions. The Rev’s facet of nature, which gives +33% boon duration helps a lot with this.

Metabattle is “good enough” in the sense that you can use it as a starting point and it’ll probably work. You can just replace celestial with Solder (Power—Toughness-Vitality)

A lot of things are pointless in pugs, but guilds that do GvGs can use all profesions, since they all have something unique they do.

make sure you coordinate which guard is stab1 and which is 2 in a 2 guard party because of what archonwing described. some commanders will call for stab 2 and others will want you to use it as stab 1 expires. If not used to the timing, I’d try to take stab 1 as that is almost always called in TS. Durability runes work real well for guards that run in zergs as well as sigils of energy.

Last but not least, if you don’t understand something just ask. A good commander or lieutenant will explain (if not in battle). Every one here was confused at some point in wvw …

Happy hunting

Warriors are important because of the banners they put down to res downed people – very important when the commander is down. If you’re running with a specific commander a lot, ask if you can join their guild – a lot of guilds have builds you can use!

A standard fighting guild comp would be Guardians for stability/boons, Eles for massive healing and boons, Revs for resistance spam and group damage reduction ,condi necros to kill eles/guardians and some groups still run boonshare mesmers for more quickness/resistance uptime.
While your comp should be mainly made up of those classes,other classes still have a niche like Warrior for warbanner and being capable of high burst, scrapper for super speed spam and stealthing focused targets, Druid for healing/stealthing focused targets and thief to do…. whatever it is a thief does. You don’t want too many of these classes in your comp, but they can be used to fill specific niches to round out your comp.

it will take some practice to determine when to use your stab. sometimes a commander will call for stab or youll freak out from an unseen inc (incoming group) and waste a stab. bomb baiting is a thing and it can also waste stab. some commanders know this others don’t. don’t try to run before you walk tho.

the other thing that is somewhat (hopefully) coordinated are water fields, mainly from eles but other classes can provide them too. groups use blast finishers on them to heal up to 5 others to regenerate hp before going back into the fight. try not to use any other combo fields if you think a water field call is inc.

the thing that isn’t and should be coordinated are bombs and wells (necro bomb). pretty much every commander will just say bomb now, because its really hard to get a large group of people to all do something at once.

a frontline revs job is to spam pain absorption to draw conditions from allies to himself and apply resistance to the party. imo dwarf is better then glint because all the boons from glint are provided for from other sources.

Stab = Stability

Stab one & two regards guardians in parties to dish out stability to their allies via the shout Stand Your Ground. The commander will call for stab one FIRST… then after a while (if it runs out or gets stripped/corrupted etc) he will call for stab TWO which is basically a back up… so on and so fourth.

The reason they do this is to ensure a lengthy & appropriate use of such a precious boon. Trust me, you don’t want to get CC’d and knocked around in a fight these days.

Yes those classes are pretty much the backbone in this current meta, however, that does not mean all the other classes deem useless. They have their roles as well; as someone mentioned – gank squads can have thieves, rangers and the occasional mesmer in it from what I’ve seen.

GvG’s will make use of every classes’ unique abilities if they so much as wish to use the variety out there.

I will agree with what someone else stated in the fact that Metabattle is an okay start but you should try out your own builds, branch out and remember to have FUN! Bear in mind if you are in a guild they will probably have their own unique builds they’ll want you to run for them.

Hope this helps.

as for class usage

Warriors:very popular front line face roll smack down “artist”
Guardians:boons boons boons heals boons and did i mention boons? yah its popular
Revenant:boons armor healing less popular version of the guardian really. 1/10 ratio of rev to other players is still suggested as its a very valuable thing.
Engineer:unpopular roamer that does very little in zergs. their ultimate is great antizerk tho.
Thief:popular roamer is popular you simply can not be caught period. did i mention zerg usage? yah there is a reason for that
Ranger:1500 range is highest in game and rapid shot is one of the best ways to down one player at a time. you dont need many in a team and they have a very high skill floor in comparison to other classes
Mesmer:one or two is plenty but is almost mandatory. team stealth exists and portal bomb/escape instantly wins team fights.
Necromancer:condition bombs are nasty. also the class has innate survival due to shroud being super awesome.
Elementalist:AOE is god in WvW elementalist is the embodiment of AOE. a single zerker elementalist can put out the damage of 5+players and if protected by a good frontline can put hard stops on enemy zerg advances.

all classes have value in a zerg but you need more heavy armor classes while those 1-2 mesmers make a HUGE difference a 3rd or 12th is pretty pointless when you could have another ele.