Amusingly I made more progress overnight last night by my defense winning than by playing myself most of yesterday - lost all that today by 5 defense losses on the trot to lots of overpowered teams but did make me smile at the time! 

Well at one time I made it all the way to Silver 1 but am now back in Bronze 1 and cannot progress.  As soon as I hit B2 I hit a wall of players well beyond my abilities.  Today in B1, I had my top team with a power of 110K.  I went in on a team showing 46K.  They did NOT have a speed lead but as soon as I entered they began fireing.  This continued for 4 full rounds for THEIR Team.  I did not get to fire a single shot and was trounced.  HOW is this even possible???  I am trying to earn medalioins, but it takes SO LONG to earn 150 for each level, and I have not even begun to consider the time it may take to earn 300.

I currantly have a "Progress Mission" to earn 50 Silver.  FAT CHANCE of that ever comming true.  AND YES I have purchased alot of silver to tank up armor, Alot of chickens to get to 6 Stars, and Alot some 6 star armor, but nothing seems to help.  I beleive I have invested close to $2,000.00 to no avail.  I am about to pack it in for a bad investment.

I do not entirely agree or disagree with both sides of this. First of all, I am a HUGE FAN of RAID!!! I am a 100% F2P player that has been playing for roughly a year. Being F2P, I struggled my way through every achievement, mission and quest. I made my way up to GOLD 4 and very, very close to PLATINUM 1 in Classic Arena. As I said for free to play, this was difficult to say the least, but it is do able. That was up until about a month ago. Since one of the last patches/ updates, it takes everything I can do to stay in Gold 1!!! I am using the same players and gear. Maybe even a little higher as I am always trying to get better. I am by NO MEANS an expert or understand all the algirithms that go into a game of this magnitude and quality. Again, I am a HUGE FAN of RAID!!! I also follow a few of the content creators and You Tube channels for tips and insight( HellHades, Ashe and Deadwood Jedi are some of my preffered go to's). I also cannot understand how when matching opponents based on team power a 65K team can beat a 165+K. Normally I run 160K- 180K team in arena depending on the quest. Almost every time if I go against a team with more than 85K power, I will lose!!!! I can not understand or rationalize making Classic Arena this difficult. For me, working as hard as I did to get this far and with the Arena being the only way to level the GREAT HALL, this change has made me want to SERIOUSLY CONSIDER stop playing. As sharp as the Plarium developers are, I do not believe they do not know about this. This MUST BE CORRECTED ASAP!!! 

Leave Arena the way it is or put in the work to fix it; whatever the case, remove Arena missions from the Arbiter chain & replace them with something that's at least gonna' be achievable without months of throwing away resources just to have a chance to complete them.  Likewise, re-work the Great Hall & come upl with some non-Arena way to build it up.  Even if PvE content was hamstrung in the Great Hall by x% of points (medals) currently awarded in Arena, it'd still make more sense for the majority of the player base since that path would probably run parallel to other content in the game.  Toiling in Gold 1 or below just to get one of the attributes to 10 is horrible game design.

As I've seen mentioned elsewhere, the recent "state of the game" vid released by Plarium is the most basic cursory glance at the data.  It's also pretty telling that of all the millions of people who play or did play RSL, the folks who possess even a single 6*-max level champ is super-small.  I think it was ASH who said today he'd be interested to see how many folks played thru until reaching some of the Arena Arbiter missions & just quit because  the amount of time & investment wasn't worth it for folks just trying to have fun playing a mobile game.  Instead, Plarium created a Pay2Win environment in a game that's free to DL & play, where stratification is everywhere.  Meanwhile across a ton of social media & forums, folks who drop serious coin into RSL feel some sort of "ownership" over the content while the rest of the players feel a little betrayed by the fact that Plarium obviously hide the fact that they're putting out gated content to drive sales.

Reducing cost of refresh to 1gem will be significant short term improvement

"I also cannot understand how when matching opponents based on team power a 65K team can beat a 165+K. "

Because You cant. No matter if you have a speed team and the opponent is not. If enemy has a HP aura champion such as MM at leader slot you will lose almost everytime. Your nuker wont kill anyone, no matter if you use decrease defense heroes, the differences is too big and when the opponent turn coming your team will be die fast.

A 65k team not have all developments. A good fitted Kael need at least 40k power for insta kill the enemy team and you need speed for other heroes, masteries,good accesories etc (remain 25k power for 4 heroes to development) and it still not enough for kill if enemies have shield,armor etc buff or resistance on starts.

30-40-50k differences sometimes enough when you meet with a noot good player, but 65k vs 165k its a mission impossible story, particularly when the opponent know the arena how to work.

My base team power is 90k, any team that have power 30k+ above it is a 90% lose due to  higher HP/DEF of opponent (tested emipracaly) 

Wait, you spent 2k on a mobile game?

Thats i'm not putting single penny for into this game of which some crucial parts of it are broken

Arena  is  a  lot harder anyone  that  says  otherwise is  a  whale  or  works  for  plarium,  im  in  gold  4  ive  noticed its  a  lot  harder  to  stay  there  now  and   it  should  be  hard  but  they  should also  remove  the  great  hall  requirements  from  arbiter  mission,  as  its  totally unfair  on  newer  players,  as i  doubt i  could do  it  now,  definitely  would  take  a  LOT  longer    

YES!  This is what really needs fixing - I hope Plarium had time to read this many pages into the thread.

Times have changed.  The Arbiter quest line was almost balanced a year ago.  Now though the difficulty in completing the Great Hall Upgrades quests ludicrously exceeds everything else.   

What has changed - chicken and egg problem.  You need an Arbiter to win a significant percent of matches in GOLD III/IV arena (this was NOT the case a year ago when <50% of teams had one).  To get an Arbiter you have to win >2500 matches in Gold arena.  Seriously "Clear the top level of Arcane Keep 10 times" is back to back with "Get 800 gold badges and upgrade a great hall mastery to lvl 8 [without an Arbiter lol]".... do those seem comparable to anyone?

I don't think the "non-insta-kill" jewlery is really a fix to this problem although it might improve the situation marginally.  

SOLUTIONS:  

1) Drop the Hall requirements by 1 or 2 levels (e.g. upgrade to level 7 becomes 5 or 6 etc, no more having to upgrade one to level 10 which is crazy-town with the current state of Gold III - Plat arena)

2) Give those missions a PVP and non-PVP option for completion (e.g. Upgrade a Great Hall Mastery to Level 8 or Complete all levels of Palace of Aravia with three stars on Nightmare)

BIG PICTURE:

This is messing up arenas.  You're forcing people doing the missions to de-level down to silver and then re-level up to Gold IV over... and over.... and over.... to have any chance of getting enough badges without having an Arbiter.  This messes up balance in those lower arenas for the earlier game players that "should" be there when they have to fight a Power 200 team with their Elhain / Kael / Warmaiden / Rhazin team.

Hi 

I had no problem staying at gold 4 for 3-4 months then recently like within the last month or so I am struggling to maintain gold 2.  almost every team has greater speed.  Just matched up against a team that had no speed aura champ and every one of their champs was faster than my high khatun who is at 254 speed.   You go first you win the vast majority of the time.  

I have spent a little here and there but if i have to spend a bunch of money for energy to farm farm for hours and hours or buy gear sets to try and get lucky with finding gear that has higher secondary speed just so I can be half way competitive in arena well.. no.

Airmaxxx your as good for this game as a turd in cornflakes. Why don't you go torture people in Farmville,  since farming is obviously your expertise.