Hiya,
so I’m having trouble getting my tracks to mixdown at a commercial level and I’m crap at mixing and mastering because I don’t know how to! 
I know I need to check EQ (how do I do that? what am I looking for?) and is a compressor always needed?
I was also reading an article from har-bal about mastering and was thinking of getting wave lab/wavelab elements…how do I use wavelab to help my tracks and can I use it without the Har-bal as they have shown?
Here’s the article I was reading:
http://www.har-bal.com/customer-support/mastering-tutorial-2
also…is it better to have the stereo output up more or the individual tracks volume up more?
Would appreciate any help given! Thank you! 
The info in the Har-Bal link you supplies is very much outdated; Wavelab 4 is shown and we’re now at version 8. WL8 comes with Voxengo CurveEQ, which seems comparable in function with HarBal, though I don’t know the last one.
Then more in general: you need to educate yourself in the world of mastering. A good place to start is Digido, a great site of mastering engineer Bob Katz with many useful articles.
@Arjan P
thanks I’ll check digido and educate myself.
About mixing. Check http://therecordingrevolution.com/2013/04/12/the-problem-with-your-mixes/
and all his 5 minute tutorial vids.
Also recommended reading: Internal Mixing by Friedemann Tischmeyer and Mike Seniors articles and book.
And most of all, directly apply what you learned, and do this a lot, reading and learning alone will get you nowhere 