There are two ways to play in arena. Either you are fast and nuke them before they can act, or you are tanky and survive their hit.

We can't say what you are doing wrong, as you didn't say what team you are using right now. But putting random champs together in arena doesn't work. You need a kind of matchplan. A typical speed nuking arena team - probably the teams beating you - looks like this:

Speed/Turnmeter buffer: Arbiter, Lyssandra, High Khatun, Apothecary, Gorgorab, Seeker, Runekeeper Dazdurk or champs like this.

Atk buffer (if not allready done by a Speedbuffer like Arbiter or Gorgorab): Yoshi, Ursala, Spirithost or similar champs.

Decrease def debuffer: Uugo, Dhukk, Stag Knight, Tayrel, Warmaiden, any champ with AoE decrease def.

Damagedealer: To much to name all of them. Trunda is probably the best, but a champ like Kael is good enough.

I personally run Yoshi (teamleader for his speedaura), Apothecary, Uugo, Sinesha. Good enough to stay in Gold IV. As there are so many champs as options, the gear is much more important. Even a team of the top tier legendaries won't win fights if you put them in bad 4* artifacts.

The amount of money you spend and the amount of days you play does not equate to what content in the game you should be able to finish or how well you are doing in arena. 

It depends on how much you grind, how lucky you are in summoning and how lucky you are in getting good gears. Good gears are at least epic gears with speed or at least have good synergy in its substats. 

With that said, show us your champions, show us the gears they have, ask which stage of doom tower you need help. People here may be able to suggest good team for you in arena too. 

I disagree with joinme. If after 5k and almost a year that is where u are at I would find a different game. 

Spending 5k means nothing

If u buy sacred shards on 30USD each for example for  an 10x  event where the pull base is more like an ocean :)

After inflation of champs brought by Plarium to spend in shards is just the worst way to spen your money and generally bring u nothing back

And another thing - instead of buying blue shards with 15-20 USD fo 10 better you buy 3k gems with 10USD and use the gems in shop to get 36 shards :))

And i am sure that if johnpage will put his champions here he might get lot of valuable suggestion and help from other players

You should be able to 4key nighmate clanboss by now, meaning 2 max chests every day.

You probably spent money on tcompletely the wrong thing. The only thing worth spending money on in this game is the daily gem pack and energy. And then not evene very energy deal.

Champions come in time anyways. No need to buy shards.

I am not even 3 months in and I am 2 keying brutal. with crap gear.

im in day 243 on fully F2P and just get arbiter and in arena G4, money is not all - throwing brainlessly money to plarium wont give you instant wins or achive anything, it is not brute force p2w. You need a bit of thinking to get most of money spend, set and reach goals which move you closer to your objectives (if you set any).

I think the truth is somewhere in between myself?.

The game is ptw, if you are buying tonnes of chickens, shards, energy etc then you can progress a lot faster and get all the top champs, and the top champs are simply better than others.

But if you dont accompany the spending with endless grinding, and if you dont learn the basics of the game then no, spending wont make you 'win'

Its not p2w, its pay to expedite.  And buying shards is the worst thing to do. More poorly geared, misutilized champs increases frustration more than progress. 

Indeed. Probably right up there with buying books and using them on the wrong champs

You can do anything in the game with enough patience. My account is proof of this. Yours too, if I remember correctly Trips?