Power is a misleading stat in arena because it doesn't consider speed, nor team synergy. In fact, if you see a team that seems to have unusually low power for the arena tier you're in, you should be very suspicious because it probably means that they are super fast, with good accuracy on their debuffer and good crit rate/damage on their nuker, so they will speed nuke you. So unless you are confident that you will be faster than them, or that you are tanky enough / have enough resistance to survive a speed nuke and then retaliate, you may want to steer clear of such teams. 

I'm sure everybody posting here has experienced the same thing at some point, losing in arena to a much lower power team. But you know, we've learned from it and now know better how to assess such teams, which is why we try to offer you advice to learn from it as well - which does indeed require knowing which team you're using. 

In the end, being successful on arena offense is largely a question of how well you analyze the opposing team before attacking - knowing what skills those enemies have, looking at their aura, their levels, the player's XP level, all the possible information you can get beforehand, which will tell you a lot about how the fight is likely to go. And then you have to see if that's a good fit with your own team's tactic. Of course it doesn't mean you can always predict in advance if you will win or not, but it does mean you can avoid a lot of fights that you are likely to lose - or just change the team you bring in order to reduce the opponent's strengths or exploit his weaknesses. 

Kramaswamy, it seems like you suggest moving past bronze and silver tiers as fast as possible to get to gold. Don't you still have to fill in all your bronze medals before you can use silver or is it possible to just blow past bronze and silver and start filling in gold? 

A point others alluded to but didn't quite make in my opinion is that Arbiter quest line is not right. Currently I'm stuck on needing to get 30 or 50 silver medals to progress. As soon as I do I'll instantly fill in 10-15 goals I completed a long time ago. The requirement for that many silver medals seems way to early in the progression chain.

 I would recommend separating PVP and PVE progression into separate quest lines. PVE progression is predictable and can be controlled by game developers. PVP progression is more fluid  because of the different strategies and methods used by the player base. 

You can use your gold medals in place of bronze and silver. Gold equals two silver or four bronze, just like silver equals two bronze.

As for the progression system - no question there, it's absolutely messed up.

Also - word of advice, not all quests can be completed ahead of time. The absolute worst offender in this are the various quests to fully ascend a champion of each type, as well as the ones to mix 10 superior potions of each type. Make sure you have the appropriate stuff saved up ahead of time for those ones.

Another thing to look for when choosing your opponents is account level. If your account is overall lvl 50 but the opponent you want to attack is account lvl 70 your probably gonna lose even if your power is a little . That lvl 70 account has had a lot more time to farm gear with the best substats fill out masturies ect.  Account lvl comparison is certainly not an ultimate indicator of outcome but it can definitely give you clues about what will be the outcome 

Thanks Krama. I had assumed that you had to use bronze for bronze ect. I've been running 2* lvl 1 champs as my arena defense cause I figured why move to silver when bronze isn't finished. I just recently tried to push into silver by using a proper defense team so I could move the progression quest along then was gonna drop back to bronze. I got around 20-30 silver medals so far. 

How does War maiden/ spirithost/ elhain/ gorgorab sound as a gold tier team? I could also let spirithost lead instead of gor and switch miscreated  for gor. 

Currently I'm running gor and miscreated in permanent spots and subbing in and out Elhain, gulkat, trunda, and sinesha Silesia in the other 2 slots. (UI screwed up. Won't let me erase silesia. Damn auto-correct.). I got other Champs I'm developing but they aren't ready yet. 

L9753 has a valid assessment:

"I'm sure everybody posting here has experienced the same thing at some point, losing in arena to a much lower power team. But you know, we've learned from it and now know better how to assess such teams, which is why we try to offer you advice to learn from it as well - which does indeed require knowing which team you're using. 

In the end, being successful on arena offense is largely a question of how well you analyze the opposing team before attacking - knowing what skills those enemies have, looking at their aura, their levels, the player's XP level, all the possible information you can get beforehand, which will tell you a lot about how the fight is likely to go. And then you have to see if that's a good fit with your own team's tactic. Of course it doesn't mean you can always predict in advance if you will win or not, but it does mean you can avoid a lot of fights that you are likely to lose - or just change the team you bring in order to reduce the opponent's strengths or exploit his weaknesses." 

But this highlights my point because it's nearly impossible to adequately assess the teams you can beat and therefore obtain medals against. Maybe a better Arena matching system might be one that is based on a player's win/loss ratio? Or better yet, just REMOVE the Arena missions from the Arbiter quest line. They're really not required. There's already a sufficient number of missions that retard your progress, so why include these Arena missions that apply the brakes; the handbrake; a parachute; and an anchor?

the most important thing in arena is speed 

a player can plan which champ goes first by manipulating the speed of each champ 

but medals are a big challenge unless you first  get your heroes maxed out and then hit the arena.

you can also go to arena defense and remove all champs except one weak champion and after sometime you will be at level 1  and then you might get to fight the weak teams at that level

also i agree that we should look at team composition, even the affinity matters 

Skullcrown, that is all.

I was drowning in B4 for months when I got her, have been farming 4x gold tokies ever since, she is a fkn MONSTER.

I don't know how many of you have actually played the game as a new player, but climbing out of Bronze is really difficult right now.  Now I'm super early game (day 25), but I've been stuck on my current mission for over 3 weeks now (Reach Silver 1).  I run diabolist, spirit host,  warmaiden, and Kael with Kael at 60 with full masteries.  Their speeds are between 181 and  177.  I can climb up to Bronze 4 by picking my battles.  Pretty much all the teams I start facing are twice my weight.  At some point in Bronze 4 though I either cannot get through the enemy champs or every option I go against is also a speed comp and I'm obviously still early game.

Now, it wouldn't matter to me at all if I had a mission that took me a lot longer in the game to get to except the VERY NEXT MISSION is something that I completed days before I got to the Silver 1 mission:  Clear the Catacombs of Narbuk on Hard.  I was through brutal in the first week.  I get that I'm probably facing dead accounts but it is frustrating as hell to have my missions gated by something currently impossible while I'm clearing content that the game developers believe to be of a similar developmental point easily.  I mean, to get through Bronze 3 I was frequently attacking teams with 4 level 60s and you can get through the brutal campaign with a team of level 50s.  It isn't even close to a comparable level of difficulty.

Seriously, for all of you claiming that it just requires changing up your team, please explain to me why the NEXT MISSION after Reach Silver 1 is something that is infinitely easier than reaching Silver 1?  Tank down to bronze and look at the teams there and tell me that Bronze 3 or Bronze 4 teams are of a similar difficulty level to clearing the Catacombs of Narbuk on Hard.  There is zero comparison right now.  I don't mind not being able to advance in the Arena until I level up my account but I do mind the missions being gated behind what the arena probalby was a year ago when the developers have obviously not looked at what the arena is today.

Absolutely  do  NOT  foget  about  warmiden,  she  has  poison  on  her  A1,  aoe  decrease  defense.  Viable  in   early  game  Clan  Boss,  low  to  mid  Gold  4  arena,  early  faction  wars  carry,  hard  hitting  A2,  force  affinity  which  helps  even  more  in  arena,  cheap  to  book  (  relatively  speaking  )  She  may  get  called  a  one  trick  pont  by  some  people  but  she  is  not.  In  a  toxic  set  she  can  be  really  good  in  dragon  and  early  clan  boss.  Build  her,  book  her....  and  take  any  adive  that  she  is  bad  with  a  pinch  of  salt.  

But  back  to  the  point  of  climbing  out  of  bronze.  I  did  it  by  spending  some  gems,  get  a  team  that  can  beat  the  bots.  You  know  the  Kael,  Apoth,  warmaiden  team  you'll  see  quite  often.  Then  i  just  refreshed  the  arena  until  i  got  a  page  of  bots.  Cost  a  couple  hundred  gems  to  do  it  but  it  did  the  trick,  if  i  hadnt  done  that  i  may  well  have  quit  the  game  before  completing  that  mission.

Nobody is disputing that the arena missions in the progress missions are absurdly out of sync with the other missions, people have been complaining about that since forever, to absolutely no avail. If they were going to change that, they would've done so by now, so you'll just have to deal with it as everybody else has done. But keep in mind that the progress missions are not introductory missions meant to be finished within a month or two, even if it may seem that way at first. When you finish the progress missions, that means having completed most content except the late endgame stuff like high-level faction wars and hard doom tower.  So while it is indeed annoying to have the arena mission roadblocks every time, then whenever you pass one arena mission you can almost automatically complete the next fifteen or twenty missions (and yes, this will keep being the case), it's not as if you could finish the missions and unlock Arbiter any time remotely soon if not for the arena missions. 

And arena has had its ups and downs in terms of difficulty over the lifespan of the game. There was a super hard period from, give or take, April or May last year until September or October or so, then a super easy period, now it certainly looks like it's turning a lot harder again, at least in the low tiers - can't really say whether it's again at the level it was before, but in any case it's heading in that direction. So yeah, many of the veterans replying here do actually have experience with a super tough bronze arena. 

It sounds like you're doing very well, having a synergized full 60 team by day 25. Soon, you'll get High Khatun so you can put her instead of Diabolist and aim to get a higher speed on her, above 200 (you don't need to increase everybody else's speed, because HK's speed/turn meter boost will ensure that as long as she goes first and the speed gap to the others isn't too big, everybody else will follow her immediately). Possibly your Warmaiden's accuracy and Kael's crit rate/damage could also use further improvement? That should allow you to get more wins against other speed nukes, as well as non-speed nukes even if they have far higher power than you. 

Warmaiden's accuracy is over 100 and in the next few days I'll have her to 6 stars and actually have an accuracy banner waiting for her.  Kael needs work, I have his crit rate at 99 (I know) and his crit damage is too low (80s I think).  

The thing is, I'm not looking to advance in the arena right now.  I just don't want to have to recomplete a lot of these accomplishments since not all of them are retroactive.  I couldn't care less if it took me a year to get out of bronze or a year and a half to finish all the missions but I do care about how out of order they are since the developers obviously expected something different and have done nothing to correct how it actually turned out.  

@Quintinar Sounds good! The large majority of missions are either retroactive, or just aren't that onerous (like having to do 10 runs of a certain dungeon, or having to do X damage on clan boss within 1 day). The big, notorious exception that you'll want to remember is the stage 4 missions that require you to ascend a champion of each affinity to ascension level 6 - if all of your 6*s are fully ascended when you hit those missions, that's pretty frustrating. 

Ok.  Here is some feedback from a F2P player.  My Apothecary has all the speed gear I can get for him, and his speed is 217.  He's great for my dungeons and minotaur runs.  If I absolutely squeezed his gear to lean all in on speed, I could get him to about 235 or so, is that REALLY worth it?

To give you some arena context from my account...I fluxuate between Bronze III (yeah...seriously) and Silver II, I get about one guaranteed win per refresh, and any time I get on a run and get into Silver II the game drops me into Bronze overnight without me even being there.  Even on my Bronze refreshes I get teams with over 200 speed and better gear than mine.  It's completely absurd.  

I have no issues with accuracy, and I use either Stag Knight or Madame as debuffers.  I have two capable heavy hitters (one is Trunda for god sake) and I understand the necessary mechanics.  My issue is GEAR.  There is no way I can get any other hero (other than Apoth) to even sniff 200 speed so even if my Apoth goes first (and he doesn't always) my nuker gets disrupted.  I don't have pure nuke gear either...so when I get a turn with my nuker I don't wipe the other team very often...I basically have no chance in arena because of speed and gear in general.  No chance.

Now, I could spend, I'm able to, but I refuse to because the game rips you off (for arena especially) so I choose to stay F2P.  I enjoy other parts of the game and that's why I still play.  Arena SUCKS and it's completely BROKEN.

Individual heroes don't matter.  I have Trunda and I'm in a cycle of Bronze III -> Silver II.  Once you understand arena mechanics...and I do...it's ALL about gear.  The arena issues are real, and the only way to overcome them is to have the kind of gear that gets your team above 200 speed and builds your nuker to actually nuke.  

F2P folks like me, and light spenders as well, just struggle to get the necessary gear.  Arena is built for whales.  It is what it is.  But it's frustrating how everybody avoids the issues in arena.

I enjoy other aspects of the game, and eventually I'll get the gear, but arena is NOT why I play.

"you can also go to arena defense and remove all champs except one weak champion and after sometime you will be at level 1  and then you might get to fight the weak teams at that level"

Can you explain this to me?  I keep reading little bits of info that are directed to your "defense" and I'm totally confused on this particular mechanic.  Please enlighten me.  I think you will enlighten a LOT of others as well.

I assume it means that lower tiers are supposed to contain easier opponents, so if you're in a lower tier you can get easy wins to climb, then a poor defense to drop you back down automatically.

Unfortunately, lower tiers offer essentially the same opposition as higher ones. At least I'm not finding any difference between B4 and S2.

When you start fighting in the Arena , you start with less than 1000 points and you are Bronze stage 1. Generally, there is a high probability to find easier opponents as compared to difficult ones.

I take it you've not actually been in bronze lately. When I climbed out of it, I expected it to get more difficult but I just wanted to get that mission completed and then drop out. If anything, from B4 (where I had spent a week) to S1, it became easier. First thing I did with the automatic refresh on tier change was win 3 battles after having struggled to win that last one to get me there in B4.