In defense of IWAY

The IWAY build catches a lot of flak in HA. It's a n00b build, there's no skill, it's just cookie cutter builds swinging merrily away with axes periodically shouting about how they'll avenge their pets. However, it does fill an important niche. As it stands, almost every team on their way to the hall will face at least one IWAY team. Any decent team can steamroll IWAY without breaking a sweat. It's very easily countered, you know exactly what the enemy team will be bringing down to every single skill on each individual's bar. The build is weak against wards, hexes, and blind is a complete shutdown. Spike damage will take down any player on the team easily. The trappers and necros are excellent targets as they have little to no defenses. A good spirit hunter or careful use of one's own spirits will help a lot.

Despite all this, teams still routinely lose to IWAY. I argue that IWAY acts similiar to the zaishen. Unskilled teams are quickly filtered out, while good teams receive morale boosts and an easy win. IWAY acts as a relatively low bar that all teams must meet to succeed.

For new players, IWAY is easy to get into, since groups are always forming and have few requirements for entry (you have IWAY? sounds good to me). The build provides low amounts of fame at a constant rate, helping new players get to r3. However, the rate of gaining fame is so slow that it's hardly worth continuing to play until r6. There are just better ways. IWAY gets players "hooked" into HA and introduces them to other builds they would not be able to join and makes them familiar with the maps and how HA is played, helping people unlearn all the PVE skills they learned and how to play in a different environment.

IWAY has already been nerfed, which was a good idea. Now the build relies on the trappers a bit more, and the necros play a larger support role. It's easily beaten. I'm hoping Anet chooses to leave it as it is. It is tremendously good at bringing new players in, and forms an effective barrier against disorganized teams. So please, as annoyed as we all get when when we lose to an unranked IWAY team without a shred of organization, give them a quick /salute. They're performing a valuable public service.

I agree that it sort of filters out worse teams, but there are a few points I have to disagree with.


IWAY, as it stands, is usually 4 warriors, 2 rangers, 2 necros, right? What if you change it? Drop the useless traps of one ranger, drop one pet, sub in another necro.. is it still a nub, no skill build?

Wards... hexes, blinds.. all can be exploited by a 4 warrior offense easily. Interrupt, shock, or have a necro gale the wards and hexes. Have coordinated attack formations.. martyr for the nasty conditions.

Modding it even slightly increases it's power tremendously, my friends and I have flawlessed top 20 guild teams with it [in the past week, yes!] We've taken halls with it, and held a few times, too... does that mean all other teams we rolled are unworthy to enter? Even if we had run the stock build, the result would probably be the same..

Or, is it possible that with party members who listen and a designated leader of some tactical ingenuity, even a 'n00b cookie cutter, no skill' build can be successful, no matter how crapy it looked on paper?

That's a big part of it, and that's especialy why unranked IWAY pugs usualy roll unranked anything else, everyone on the IWAY team knows what they're supposed to be doing, where as the other team people tend to get confused on what to do.

With that said, any well coordianted team with a decent build should be able to beat IWAY.

Mods here dont really like IWAY discussions, but I just want to add that -
Unskilled players with ANY othe build will ALWAYS loose to unskilled players running IWAY. That is the sole reason its as popular as it is nowdays (or was).

IWAY is like the Enter Mission button in RA. You can get into the game without really bothering to look for a group.

iway has been here since time immemorial. if you still lose to it, maybe check yourselves and think twice about blurting "iway noobs".

i see many people in forums saying "i never lose to iway" yet i personally saw them lose to it at one point. reality check?

iway is a build, just like others. it's a gimped build (melee, weak defense, all physical damage). running it successfully will require at least skill.

not true. if one is good at iway, he will get his fair share of fame quickly (even from r0->r9 in 2 months).

unless he is a wannabe and just iway solely to jump on the bandwagon and get fame.

Many diffrent changes for the IWAY build is happening.

/agree
Gimped build it is and if you can't beat it despite IWAY being fotm for 6 months then there are flaws in either your build or the people you play with.

You're defending a build that:

A)Made rank that anyone actually got through legitimate builds utterly useless.
B)Cause the HA districts to be filled with nothing but demands for IWAY.
C)Caused the lack of american favor in the last few weeks to only be short and sporadic.
D)Caused several american guilds to leave for european servers.
E)Caused nerfs to skills that would have been fine if it were not for the fact of this build.

It doesnt matter if it's an easy build to steamroll, its the fact that theres so much demand for those kind of teams that american teams rarely hold HoH anymore.

The reason a lot of people hate IWAY is because it loses most of the time in the HoH and thus Europe keeps favor all day.

That's not so much the reason as is the fact that every district of HA is now spammed with IWAY group brouhaha, or the fact it's caused other skills to get nerfed that otherwise wouldn't have been.

Well, maybe it is the reason for you, but not for everyone.

Re-read Theus' post, he said all the main ones.

My first fame ever, was in a PuG rspike. I used the pre-made template WoH monk (Mo/E). It took 2 hours to get that group together, and we got a total of one fame when we lost to iway. I asked around, and when I found out that r3 was 180, I almost quit pvp right there. I thought to myself, 180, how would I get to r3 in under a year... I talked to one of my friends, and asked how to get into pvp. He told me to try iway. I did some research, and found out the orders necro build. There was a shortage of order necros, so I earned 10k faction from RA, and unlocked the order skills. The first iway group I played in, I "earned" 3 fame. In two weeks I had my bambi. I then started joining r3 groups, but I was still earning 3-4 fame a run.

The point is, that IWAY is an excellent way to get into pvp. But once you reach 180 fame, it should be over with.

Europe does not run much IWAY, its the americans who keep running IWAY and can't win HoH off the European balanced teams. If America ran more balanced builds perhaps they may gain favor sometime this year.

IWAY may be beneficial to some people... but so was every other major build in gw. air spike was the first build to become widely popular and introduced people to the concept or an organized team. Smite offered monks an alternative to healing and allowed new people to be successful much like iway does. Spirit groups allowed rangers a group when they were otherwise underused in pvp.
But, those were all nerfed after a short while to preserve originality and creativity in making builds within the game. iWAY on the other hand has stuck around for 8 months now as the only dominant build in HA. If you are r6 or below and want an alternative to iWAY, you have to wait around for 2 hours just to find a group.. what fun is that?

I disagree with this because if a team knows that the majority of the opponents they will be facing are iWAY, all they have to do is create a build that counters it and boom.. they've got a good run. Look at FoC groups for example. (even though theyre not too common nowadays)

IWAY does indeed filter out some bad teams and make competition a little more fun higher up in the tournament, but it also makes the metagame very boring and predictable. There's a 99% chance that when you enter the Tombs... er... HA... You'll fight IWAY. After the thousandth time beating it, it really does get tedious.

Maybe if people were occasionally a little less picky about the people they let into their groups, didn't always group with guildmates, and tried to help newer and unranked players into PvP by taking them under their wing instead of forcing them to IWAY just to PvP, things would be a little different.

I think we all need to realize that the people that play in IWAY groups are only part of the problem. This is coming from someone who doesn't go in HA very often because he hasn't got any rank and doesn't IWAY. :\


BTW, I agree IWAY does filter out teams but so do the necro groups that are in HA. But the whole point of HA is so that the teams filter each other out. You don't need IWAY for that.

Not true, I got a Paladin Smackdown team in about 20 min. We were all using the premade paladin build with a 4/4 build of W/Mo and Mo/ . We got pretty far, Broken Tower I think. Forgot to take SS though.

Honestly how so? That people found it easier to win with this build because it is pug friendly? Even when IWAY was at the top of the game organised teams (often guild/friend teams) beat it EASILY.
The popularity of IWAY had a lot to do with the fact that you could pug it and get results. Running balanced takes time to practise and tweak.

I'll agree that there are many demands for IWAY in HA. However what about ToPK, and SF. There is also a demand there for a very specific team build.

Are you saying that America can't gain favour because they can't manage to defeat IWAY? I would say that is a problem with American teams - not with IWAY.
Or are you saying that America can't get favour because all they want to run is IWAY? I would stil say that is a problem with American teams - not with IWAY.

I actually wonder if it had more to do with the general attitude of NA HA players rather than IWAY, but of course I don't think that we will ever really know the true reasons they chose to do this.

The only skill I can think of here is OoV. All the other skills that were "nerfed" were nerfed because - no matter the team - they were overpowered.
I don't agree 100% with the OoV nerf. I think maybe it would have been better if it didn't trigger when other ORDER spells were on you.

Then I suggest that America needs to change its attitude. You can't just blame a build, and inanimate, non-thinking entity for all the woes the American server is experiencing. Wipe IWAY and another FoTM build will take its place to dominate on the server because the attitude of the general population is that they need to run the FoTM to win. While the intelligent half of the population knows that isn't the case you don't just take away one thing and expect them to get over it - you have to educate them to adopt different methods or one FoTM will always be followed by another.

FoTM is here to stay, but that doesn't mean that it has to completely dominate HA. It's the attitude of the players that let it dominate. It would be nice if people would recognise that for once and stop blaming a "build" which has no control over the situation whatsoever.

/agree

Anyone who complains about IWAY should shut up, seriously, if you people who rag on it complain about how it always loses to Europe's Balanced teams, then why don't YOU GET YOUR ASS OFF GURU AND DO SOMETHING ABOUT IT! Go start a "real" team and WIN THE FAVOR BACK. Until then, just keep getting beat by IWAY and shut up.

BTW, the other day we ran original IWAY with 8 wars, and we gained about 15 fame from the run. So, it isn't really weakened from the original build.

Just wanted to say that the bold+underline assumption is way off

I dunno, IWAY can be fun sometimes and even with a little modding can be made pretty tough to beat.

A bunch of guildies and I decided we wanted a quick HA run today, we didn't feel like organising a proper build like usual so we decided to run IWAY. We had 3 rank 3's and everyone else unranked (although I wouldn't look too deeply into that, most of them were experianced from GvG)

After someone said we will have some fun but never win halls this happened. (Im Krijgslieder One)

You will notice we dropped the matyr trapper for an e/mo and it made this build MUCH better against balanced teams. (Double Meteor Shower was great, and we had matyr + purge + more healing)

The two teams we faced in halls were [HooD] (rank 37) and a team comprising of [WM] [RenO] and [SnE] so I wouldn't call them pushovers.

The build is fun quick and relatively effective. Its not any more powerfull in the hands of skilled players then any other build is in the hands of equally skilled players. Theres no reason to hate on it.

EDIT: I have permission from guildys to post it

I don't really get the martyr trapper thing, a trapper running martyr strikes me as the crappest trapping build ever... trapping with whirling without oath shot... meh.

Wouldn't the martyr be better off on the necro or something else? like that emo build in the above screenshot.

You must have faced some crap teams
_

I still lose to IWAY, not so much with the guild, but with pugs.... this is largely because most rank 6 plus plus plus pugs are terrible, and at least 2 of your players tend to have iway'd all their fame and think that now is the time to try monking... so everyone dies.

In defense of IWAY, it's one of the better fame farming builds there is, because it rolls bad teams. If you think it rolls good teams too, you're wrong, and if it rolls you all the time, it's because you are in fact in a bad team

We've ran a version over the fpe weekend that some guildie got off some friend in another guild consisting of a battle rage sword warrior, 2 axes, and 2 vim monks... and some other thing... and that tended to slaughter other iways... a funny comment we got was "don't you just hate it when people ruin real iway."

I largely dislike it, and HA to an extent now because it consists of a vast number of fame farming builds without anything really new or interesting.

Necro Spike is getting old.... although I really like watching rnub in gvg with it , and that monk ele spike build is just... ick, though in fairness it's the way to play if you want to hold halls for a long period of time... that's a flaw of HA though, as a result we're seeing some rather lame builds consisting of a good caller and 7 zombies

Iway doesn't need defence.

They are applying to the "Offence is the Best defence" quote.

Who needs defence when your enemies are already dead?

Personally I think the whole idea behind Iway is brilliant. My build known to most as Humpgort or Gortway was completely fueled by that idea and it works amazingly well. Now if all the Iways ran that instead you'd see a very new metagame. Too bad you need TS/Vent to run it or else it might just happen.

Personally I think it's sad that people can't run original builds that much anymore because you ALWAYS need to think about IWAY. You need either wards, blind, aegis (double), ... And that just limits builds and it's a shame. On the other hand some people say it's easy fame farming for new players, but those players have been "new" since october and been running IWAY for months now, so no excuse for that.

The main reason iway is run is because instead of standing round for an hour looking for a team you can get one in like 1 minute. Iwayers can be accused of fame farming but iway is no different then builds like ranger spike and blood spike.

The reason I don’t like the build is it allows even the most retarded people to compete in an area that should reward intelligence and tact.

I agree with the fact Iway was an easy way to get to R3 i loved being the Tainted necro in the build messing with the build for a lil fun.But once R3 wanted to try other builds.I think Iway does let newer PvPers get a taste of the ocasional victory but after time finding yes we are losing why?.And then moving to try other builds.Instead of discouraging then by losing thinking pvp isnt for me. And if you lose to Iway maybe that build really wasnt what you should have came down with try again.

Thats my 2 cents anyway

IWAYers were always the guardians of HoH
you can't win and hold HoH if you can't beat them, IWAY always exclude bad builds from tournament

The point is that there was a time when new players could and would get into diverse groups that actually required some amount of skill to play. iway is now almost the only thing that lower level players use, and all it teaches them is how to attack. Therefore we have large amounts of people with high ranks and no skill. Also, Because iWAY introduced fame farming, it is to blame for the rank seperation that we have today and the fact that almost any good group other than iWAY is in internation districts and requires r6+.

Look at TA and see the plentiful diverse types of builds that newer players are allowed to join, wouldn't you like to see HA like that? Also, you don't actually have to face the teams in topk and sf like you do in HA where fighting the same build every time is boring and repetitive.

Changing iWAY is alot easier than changing the mindset of American teams.

Probably both, but youre right, no way of telling.

The problem isn't that iway is a fotm build, it's that it's the flavor of 8 friggin months of nothing but iway build. Yes, another fotm build will arise when iway is nerfed, but at least then there will be something new in HA. And I can't imagine any new fotm build requiring as little skill or being as widely used as iway. I never heard as many complaints about air spike when it was the fotm.

He never said he thought that IWAY was any of those things. He was doing sort of a first person quotation when he said:

if iway is such a noobish as many people say, why do they win then? and i think it's more noobish to sit here complaining about other builds all the time! iway build is a nice build for those who are not so experienced in pvp/gvg and instead of waiting forever to get all the skills for other builds they can try iway at the beginning......you should really just stop the whining about iway........

legitimate builds? you mean spirit spam, air spike, euro fotm, blood spike, r spike, and all those other builds that just pack a shitload of defense and stall the game for a couple of minutes? there is NOBODY that is rank 9 right now that has never played a fotm, ha was made for builds like iway and blood spike.

its funny how all the defense for iway is coming from people that play iway in iway guilds most people dont like iway because the iway players are terrible in other builds and thats why they play iway.

the problem with iway is not that its overpowered because it isnt. just like bloodspike and ranger spike it makes tombs boring. at least bloodspike and ranger spike have chances of winning vs good teams more than 1/10 times. go in tombs and 75% of your matches are against iway ,blood spike, and ranger spike. it just gets repetitive and boring when you know what you're facing before the match starts. balanced players have to gimp their builds just to account for some defense for iway teams which is rediculous

Those builds still require alot more skill than iWAY, and notice that most were fotm around the same time. That was a time when there was a lot of diversity, originality, and options in tombs.

Yes, because we played IWAY once or tice were an IWAY guild, what a croc.

Although I can agree that many IWAY players are terrible in other builds. Their often terrible in the IWAY build its just a bit more forgiving. Maybe if you actually took a bit of time to talk to people you play with before inviting them like I do you could avoid this.

I don't gimp my balanced builds to deal with IWAY, I juist take things which are usefull anyway. The warrior hate I take in a balanced build would probably be taken anyway iway didn't exist.

I wouldn't hate IWAY if their wolves werent so .. loud.. .

IWAY doesn't really bother me, when I do play tombs I get one or two IWAY teams, I guess I'm lucky.

It's not IWAY that's great, Don't get me wrong Pets, Traps,Tainted, spirits, and Orders add to the confusion as well as provide som extra damage.

But the reason IWAY is so dominant is because Axe Warriors in general are very dominant, any build will fall quite easily with a bunch of Axearriors raging all over the place. Warriors have a very high dps and add that in with pets, conditions, and all the rest and if the initial damage from the warriors doesn't kill you, the dps will.

IWAY isn't a noob build, it's a very good build that noobs can play. In my opinion the fact that 8 unranked players running IWAY are quite capable doing very will in Heros Ascent is the reason it takes so much heat. Because people just can't stand the fact that the build is so simple to make and yet so easy to lose too.

IWAY is by no means an auto-trip to the HoH but there have been times where I've sat around in a custom or guild group getting organized for 30+ minutes, only to be swept by a random IWAY PUG in the first round, which is why I believe so many people hate it.

The problem is with HA's lame maps not Iway and the other FOTM's.