Trying to figure out IWAY

[Liquidus]

Hi, I was just playing Tombs with a random but pretty organized group and it seems that we lost to IWAY groups 3 times in a row. What I'm trying to do now is to figure out how IWAY works so I know what works AGAINST IWAY. In the forums, I see quite a few IWAY builds, but could somebody explain the idea of a IWAY Group, and what each of the chars is doing? (Sorry if eveyrbody knows this already)

So far, I know IWAY stands for "I Will Avenge You!" and warriors use that with a dead pet to gain increased attack speed and health regen. What I don't get is how the pets are supposed to die, is the IWAY team supposed to rely on the other team to kill the pets? Does the IWAY team kill its own pets somehow?

Since IWAY lasts 10 secs, is the IWAY team supposed to kill most of the other team in that time? After IWAY wears off, what does the IWAY team do?

Also, am I right that the necro just uses orders to increase damage? Am I missing anything? Thanks for the help.

[Two April Mornings]

i usually beat iway by killnig the trapper then the necros and no pets in between. Wars can be picked off easily with when then don't ahve iway on

[Everyname Is Taken]

Its simple, expecially if your running a spike. Lay down frozen soil at the very begining, spike 4 of them real quick and they are done.

Or if your not running a spike, still lay down frozen and kill as many as you can, since they dont have much self heal. Once iway reaches their tipping point its hard to beat.

[Liquidus]

What is the point of IWAY having a trapper, and how do they get their pets killed?

[Everyname Is Taken]

Lots of things are going on in the battle, a lot of aoe stuff (unless your running a spike), don't forget eoe, it helps kill the pets when one of the pets die.

[TheOneAndOnlyX]

NPCS/stupid team mates

[Liquidus]

I just found this article on GuildWiki http://www.guildwiki.org/wiki/IWAY
It helped me a lot on understand IWAY, the annoying thing is that there doesn't seem to be a link to builds, you just have to search for something and hope its there...

[tafy69]

Pets kinda die by themselves because of the disease going around, the main thing u gota do is kill the trappers basically, theres more to it than that but thats the no1 thing

[Crunch]

Basically tainted makes other team diseased and has some attack, order adds to damage and has small healing. Rangers bring a spring which helps to heal. Whoever said lay down frozen is wrong because any normal iway will see it and target it immediately.

[Entropius]

In detail, a standard IWAY might look something like this:

One Necro/Ele with Tainted Flesh, and some of the following: well of suffering, well of the profane, putrid, death nova, maelstrom, deathly swarm.

One Necro/? with Order of the Vampire, Order of Pain, and self-heals (breeze, area, unguent, blood renewal are common)

Five W/R's with IWAY, penetrating blow, executioner's, eviscerate, res sig, charm animal, disrupting chop, and one of: (winnowing, predatory season, nature's renewal, edge of extinction, revive animal)

One R/Me with traps and mantra of resolve


The basic idea is to swarm the other team with the warriors and pets. Because Orders of Pain/Vampire affect pets as well as teammates, this build has a high damage output. Once something drops, wells/putrid just add to the chaos. The warriors don't use their res sigs until several people have died, at which point they turn on IWAY and bring everyone back.

The trapper is a late addition to the build. One common defense against IWAY is (was) to form a tight ball, put up healing seeds on anyone being targetted, and mangle the bunched warriors with AoE spells. Maelstrom and Mark of Pain were used to counter this, but neither were all that effective. The trapper was added as a way to force people out of those tight balls.

The build is powerful because of its several synergies:

IWAY works on pets, so run lots of pets.
Order of the Vampire and Order of Pain work on pets.
No healing and lots of attacks, so run Predatory Season.
You want the pets to die anyway, so run Death Nova on them.
Your team has access to health regeneration from IWAY, so Edge damage and disease aren't that scary.

Good counters to the IWAY teams involve, first and foremost, shutting down the necros. If they're out of action, your job becomes much easier, since the orders add so much to damage.

Aegis or ward vs. melee is a must. Blind/cripple effects, anti-warrior hexes, and the like help too.

AoE damage, while it is likely to kill the pets, can mangle the warriors if you have enough of it. However, the death necro at the very least should usually be dropped first before worrying about the warriors.

[mortalis doleo]

you can pretty much target anything you like as long as it's not a pet or a warrior.

order: the order necro is suppling the heavy damage, killinghim will make your monks life easier. on the other hand, he will be standing far away, forcing your team to split up, and iway works great against unorganized teams.

trapper: the trapper is there since the common cure for iway is balling up. if you ball up with a trapper loose, then you will be killed very quickly. trappers need to be killed quickly, either by literally killing them, or having a wild blow warrior shut the trapper down.

tainted: i think you need to kill this one the fastest. he will be in spell range.
the tainted uses the deaths of the warriors and pets as levarage, effectively hurting your team. he will cast death nova on a dying warrior/pet, and once dead, will follow up with putrid. that is 200+ damage and oison to whoever was near the warrior/pet, and since they are melee, that damage will be dealt to at least one party member (all if balling up). considering EoE, a few of these will kill your party.

[Ensign]

Orders do not affect pets.

Peace,
-CxE

[Entropius]

I know they did the last time I played seriously in Tombs, which was a bit ago... was this changed in a patch?

[Nerdy]

IWAY works, kind of.

You can usually get a couple of maps in and then come across something a bit harsh like a proper IWAY counter build or a TS using spiking team, even a pure trapper team.

I earned 15 fame in one evening. Gonna take some time to get to R3. lol

[Jblee]

don't forget spiteful spirit...the way IWAY warriors and rangers are clumped together makes it a very powerful spell. empathy is good too.

[Klmpee]

what gives iway the most power is the spirits.. after many times of fighting iways i finally have relized it.. its not the orders necro that gives most of the power.. its all about the spirits. pred season is one that give them alot of power.. it halfs healing by monks making it faster to kill people and everytime they get a hit off they r getting 5 health back.. NR is also deadly.. it basically shuts down a protmonk.. and anyone using enchants and this is what makes a orders necro weak imo.eoe is another winning part of iway.. once iway is up, even if a chain goes off.. iwayers may still be standing because of regen.. winnowing kinda helps both teams so.. u can either take it down or leave it up..
The point is.. KILL the SPIRITS!! u would have a much easy time when the spirits are down......
end,
Klmpee

[Josh]

My thoughts for Counters against IWAY Teams:

~ Kill the Order Necro
~ Kill the Spirits
~ Elementalist's Water Magic Spell "Blurred Vision"
~ Necromancer's Elite Spell "Spiteful Spirit"
~ Mesmer's Spell "Empathy", of course only works on 1 Target
~ Kill the Trapper
~ "Blackout" the Trapper / Order Necro

There are quite a few comebacks. :p

[Guardian of the Light]

Hey mybe you could try bringing that Warrior's Bane Pre-build and adding Shadow of Fear to kill IWAY.

[Misz_Piggie]

Several tactics that work against warriors and groups of warriors will still be effective counters against IWAY teams, including:

* Protective enchantments like Aegis and Healing Seed. Note, however, that if the IWAY team has a chance to put Well of Profane up, taking these skills will be in vain.
* Use the corpses before the IWAY necromancer can. This can be best done with a Mesmer/Necromancer.
* Use Hexes like Shadow of Fear, Spiteful Spirit, Blurred Vision, Thunderclap Fevered Dreams ... that are effective against the clumps of warriors.
* Traps are very effective against IWAY, but beware, most will have trappers aswell. Full trapper teams are usually massacred by IWAY.
* Cause blindness and weakness.
* The Orders Necromancer is the softest target in an IWAY team, go for him and you can greatly reduce their ability to heal or damage. A warrior, enchantment stripper, or ranger can easily take these out.
* Staying close, a ball, is a bad idea unless you can interrupt Maelstrom and keep their trappers with low energy. Some IWAY warriors will also carry Cyclone Axe to deal with balls and groups that stay together.
* Simply avoid killing all the IWAY pets at once to decrease the bonus warriors get from "I will avenge you!". Attack the pets last.
* Drop a Greater Conflagration nature ritual to totally negate the damage boost from Order of Pain and Order of the Vampire.
* Ward Against Melee, Ward Against Foes, and other slow downs greatly reduce the effectiveness of warriors.
* Frozen Soil greatly hinders most IWAY teams.

[Guardian of the Light]

O ya balling DOESN'T work anymore ever since I setted that debate and indroduced the sword into IWAY and show the uber power of sword in IWAY adn its elite 100 blades which after doing some calculations it was found 100 blades was better without deep wound add which wasn't b/c we wanted half sword and half ax.

Now I'm smacking my head b/c I made a build which has a lot of counters but hard to find them have less. >.<

Also I have found that RUNNING YOUR BUT OFF works nice against IWAY. What the point of having frenzy or tiger's flurry on if you can't keep your target still enough to make more then one swing in a row.

[a cadet]

Actually, guardian, the reason you dont want to ball up against an IWAY team are the trappers. If you allow both trappers to actually use traps on you, while balled up, your looking at party death. Regardless of a warrior using Hundred Blades, or Cyclone Axe, what really does the damage to a team that balls are the traps.

Add to that warriors using Distracting Blow, and you wont even be able to cast spells.

What also makes IWAY teams work so well is the spirit Edge of Extinction. If you let 2 people in your team die against an IWAY, and EoE is down, thats roughly ~80 damage to the rest of the party. If someone was already at half health, hes suddenly only one or two hits from dying, which results in more EoE damage, and eventually kills the entire party. EoE can work against an IWAY team too - in fact most 'good' IWAY teams play with two warriors carrying Edge of Extinction, the higher damage one for altar maps, and the lower damage one for cases where you need to make sure you dont accidentally kill your own team.

[Billiard]

There have been multiple IWAY and IWAY counter threads. Please search and see if you get your answers that way before starting a new one.