IWAY problem?

Well, a lot of people complain about the considerable number of IWAY teams in Heros Ascent competing for HoH. People, frustrated by IWAY, have thrown out statistics like, "75% of the teams in HoH are IWAY". Surely a build that is so easily organized and so dominant is unfair right?

I do not think IWAY is overpowering overall. Yes it is true IWAY wins HoH a lot, but how often does an IWAY team, besides [cute], hold halls? IWAY's reign in halls usually seems to be a "One Night Stand". However I agree that there must be some flaw if just anyone can run it. And yes just anone CAN run it maybe not as well as others but they CAN do it. The problem with IWAY is that it can beat you in so many ways reguardless of your build. If you use enchantments to counter the four warriors they throw up natures and there goes your Aegis or life bonds ect ect. Not to mention traps stopping your kiting and interrupting you.

My question for all of you IWAY raggers is what would YOU do to stop IWAY in hoh? Keep in mind that you cannot just rearrange a skill in any order you want because it could affect other builds or skills.

*PS: This does not make me an IWAY :-) I am interested to see other player's ideas towards the build. If you think HoH is more competitive and stronger with IWAY by all means say that in your reply!*

I just started PvPing with people in my guild and they run an IWAY team. Usually, we win 2 or 3 in a row, and then get beat by a good balanced team. The reason we beat the first couple of teams is because they're usually other IWAY teams and we just play better.

A good balanced team can beat a good IWAY team everytime.

'Everytime' is an overstatement. I've beaten some high-ranked guilds bringing their 'A' game with IWAY plenty of times... [although, it was with r6+ teams the majority of which were r9+].

But for all the ~r3/6+ pugs a good balanced team can stomp all over 'em pretty nicely.

Easiest ways to take out iway: maintaining wards, maintaing fertile season, spiteful spirit [put it on the pets-- they won't stop attacking; however, warriors will stop attacking if SS is put on them].
Aegis chains.. etc.


Plenty of defenses, just take your pick. A good, organized team using some sort of voice-com should have no trouble with the mediocrely ranked IWAY pugs out there.

Exactly, thats why a good team can win everytime. With IWAY, theres not much versatility. Balanced teams have so many options and so many ways of defending against the simple melee attackers.

If you're a balanced team and you get beat by IWAY, you're doing something wrong. You didn't keep up wards, spirits died, whatever it may be. As long as you have a solid gameplan and counter for IWAY, it is not hard to beat.

There is no problem with IWAY. It's not an overplayed build..

hehe, nice

Cute won that match.

I agree on that - if you lose to IWAY as a balanced team, it's because you've made a mistake - in fairness though, you only need to make one mistake to get rolled. An interrupted ward can mean a lot of trouble for example. And the longer the game goes on, the more likely you are to make a mistake - beating a mediocre IWAY shouldn't be too difficult, and against a very good IWAY you still have to make a mistake to lose

IWAY is a very strong build though - and a good fame farmer - I don't go anywhere near it myself, and I am rather sick of it since it's just overplayed - but I think it's quite clear as to why people run it. You can do very well with it, without actually being particularly good and have a without having a good overall knowledge of the game - occasionally when seeing some of the better iway teams run other things in say Team Arenas it is quite shocking how strictly average some of the players are with other builds. Sure IWAY is easy to learn, probably very hard to master (I wouldn't know), and it's played very differently to a lot of builds, which would explain why people who have made their way up with IWAY might struggle with other things

In the actual halls - in a three way I personally love it when the other attacking team is IWAY - even some of the better holding builds are going to struggle to keep up their ghost against the damage output of an IWAY build, especially when there is another team attacking too - and with an IWAY's ghost being significantly easy to kill you have a decent chance of winning.

Against a good holding team last night in the halls, we very much over estimated how long it would take for us to drop the holding ghost even with the other team being IWAY - and as a result ended up capping way before we wished, and as a result... lost

maybe i'm just crazy and admittedly haven't played much against IWAY but wouldn't any decent wards build own it?

As i stated before, iway isn't hard to beat. It's overplayed, not overpowered. Many players stay away from HA because of that. It's boring to do the same thing 90% of the time, and get pawned by a team who is prepared to beat teams that mainly concern on beating iway.

The only problem I see that usually screws us to IWAY are: Spirits and Trappers. For one, a 3 (hell, maybe even 2) monk team CAN heal and prot against IWAY warriors. The problem is mainly the spirits that they put up, namely Natures Renewal, Pred Season, and EoE. Those spirits hamper the monks with slow and poor healing, not to mention more damage if people died. Trappers are the real main hurts in their build with the aoe of traps. Monks have to deal with the damage done by their warriors and now have to heal against condition degen from bleeding, set on fire and the inability to kite away from barbed trap and spike trap.

What we usually do to fight iway is have a designated person on spirit duty, killing spirits when they are placed, while the rest of the team kill their trappers. There are instances where it's nearly impossible to win because they put their spirits up at the most difficult area to reach and you have sludge through eleventy billion traps just to get there.

My real main question for IWAY is.. How on earth do you guys hold halls with no healing?

Normally the normal way but just intterupting ghosts when they try to cap, sometimes eoe bomb. What you have to remember is that IWAY has 8 extra rez sigs every 2 minutes ^^

I'de say that IWAY puts everyone on equal footing at times. In IWAY, a Rank 0-3 player who knows how to play Guild Wars can get in a good team that might get a good 12-20 fame per hour. In any other instance, besides the terrible Minion Mass, that same player would never find a group.

IWAY drops the terrible balance groups that attempt to enter the Halls, making themselves almost like the 'Unworthy' challenge.

The problem is not with IWAY, it is with the standard player who refuses to alter his build; thus making all IWAY the same. People who don't "want to bother with it" shouldn't be playing PvP, they should be on their couch eating potato chips ^^

IWAY isn't a great build, it is a so-so build. I think all we would really need, instead of 'nerfing' everything about it, is to split the IWAY religion into different sects

Have you ever heard of Your Math Teacher? the Rank 9 IWAY guild? Just wondering??

I have a thought.

Being that most of IWAY focuses on melee combatants, why not simply throw in a, say, mark of pain, to discourage their zerging?

I didnt realise how overplayed it was until a last week, i was up around 5am~ GMT just pugging because i couldnt sleep and i swear, from 3hrs of pvp i didnt meet another balanced team.
I think its because the US players play more around that time, i was suprised to see some guilds which before i thought were decent guilds, but they were all running IWAY.

8x Heal Party > iWay

iway is annoying, but it cant be overcome. My guild isnt a bunch of champions but we are improving, and we have flawlessed iway many times, our defense of choice was aegis chains, just run 2 prot monks, 1 heal party monk and your find

I forget which interview but Anet has said that if a FOTM stays FOTM too long that they will "shake" things up if things are to stagnant.

Gaile in game mention that Iway will become like other FOTM and "fade away" . I think they are going to tweak skills in the balance changes to alter to make Iway less effective but not remove it since they did put the ability to practice against it in the Battle Isles.

(Always nervous posting near Ensign who is dead right)

Like someone said, the issue is that IWAY became a FoTY not FoTM ^^

Being close to the skill balance, i hope changes empower new builds and strategies... but i still have the feeling the problem lies elsewhere... why IWAY became so popular... and why people run it even knowing is a so-so build?

A lot of possible answers for those questions, but my eyes are on the rank system