Why -way?

This has bugged me since I started playing. Why do people put -way at the end of all the trendy team builds? Does it all have to do with the old "I Will Avenge You!" builds?

It's the "way" that team works...

It's because most of the GW community are cliche, cookie cutting, mindless sheep.

tbh, I don't get half the names people give their builds. I just call my favorite ones "ITMarkIV" after a while.

The earlist "-way"s i remember were IWAY and VIMway... but i'm going to say it probably came from IWAY.

Of course. IWAY was so big for so long, every FOTM build since has had the -WAY appended. It's similar to the way anyone who's addicted to something is a "somethingoholic". Evolution of the English language, innit?

"I Will Avenge You" - pretty much the first real highly abused cookie cutter build out there. Note that the skill is "IWAY" - usually pronounced as "EYE-WAY".

I never played it so I will most likely have something wrong here, but it was basically group of warrior/rangers with pets that sent the pets in. If you didn't kill the pets they had a high enough damage (along with the group of warriors) that you died. Assuming you bothered to kill the pets then the warrior activated [skill]"I Will Avenge You!"[/skill] and at the time a pet counted towards an ally. Thus the warriors got a very long term IAS and lots of health regen to beat up on you very nicely. There were a few other required slots that I do not recall offhand (seems a necro was needed in there for something but it may be another class).

So in effect you ended up fighting a huge number of damage dealers and died or you ended up fighting invincible warriors and died. Like everything there were counters, yet they were IWAY specific and generally gimped you against other builds. Since the build was easy to run there were MANY terrible players that copied the build to gain fame and other PvP rewards. There were a few later "nerfs" that made the build work not so well and, like other PvP builds, required actual teamwork to be effective and it fell into disuse.

However since it was the very first real *highly* abused team build in GW (there were other abused cookie cutter builds - but it even got so bad that even PvE only people at the time knew of it - of which I am mostly in that class) and it had a catchy name it was used from then on to denote other cookie cutter little skill builds. You can easily ad "way" to then end of any build name if you want.

It comes from the old IWAY teams

IWAY used a Order Necro (death) who was spaming orders to heal the party and buff the dmg of all melee classes. The usual group consisted of 5-6 warriors, 1-2 rangers and 1 necro. The key was to kill the necro as fast as possible but it coud be difficult becouse he was usually camping far away from the fight and just spaming orders.

Thanks - like I said I never played the build (or against it either - mainly a PvE player) but I recalled one other class was a key part. An orders necro makes sense in this build and was what I thought was used but wasn't sure enough to post it. Too long ago and not that much personal interest on my part at the time to know much more than what was posted on forums.

Like every US political scandal is a "........gate", since the infamous Watergate scandal.

Ok, so it is just an homage to the old IWAY build. Thats what I figured.

Yeah, the -gate thing annoys me, too. But this most recent ho-gate almost redeemed it.

I always found it funny how people would talk crap about IWAY and then go make build names after it.

because thats the "way" that everyone starts to play. NoobWay FTW!!

makes no sense to me either. adding "-way" to every build name makes just about as much sense as saying "ATM machine" or "PIN number".

Yea the suffix -way came from IWAY builds. Just the same way any political controversy has -gate attached to the end, derived from Watergate with Nixon.

Snap!

We have that in England too - ever heard of Camillagate?

I think it began with IWAY.

Ah...IWAY. Back when HoH = favor and Europe whooped our butts when it was nerfed.

And Korea whipped our butts before it was nerfed

And now, the end is here
And so I face the final curtain
My friend, I'll say it clear
I'll state my case, of which I'm certain
I've lived a life that's full
I traveled each and ev'ry highway
And more, much more than this, I did it with IWAY!

The first most famous cookie-cutter build was based on the skill I Will Avenge You! and became known as IWAY. After that people started adding -way to gimmicky builds. Spiritway FTL!