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.