With stoneskin becoming prevalient, all the new krisks just released, and the recent nuker 10x, we're going to see a big shift in arena.  What you currently have won't be as effective, as a lot of other peoples teams just significantly improved on both offense and defense.

the weird thing I am seeing is I am not winning ANY defensive matchups now, when I would routinely win 20 to 30 a day.  This change occurred immediately with the new patch.  Where are the people that were attacking me and losing?  Why am I not showing up on their arena sheets anymore?

I understand that someone that has lost to my team probably won't attack me again unless they get an upgrade, but I was winnging 20 to 30 defense matches a day for months before the new patch like clockwork.  I doubt everyone that would lose to me suddenly marked me off their list on the same day last week.

So...it is likely a case of correlation isn't causation because after what felt like an initial drop in difficulty in arena following Gold V/extended Plat, it's been slowly - at times not so slowly - ratcheting up again. 

I doubt you're on anyone's list, and the people that were attacking you and losing have honestly probably just been sent down to significantly lower tiers of Arena. There's certainly appears to be a trickle down effect in Gold IV, so I presume a lot of folks are feeling it now, too. Given all the circumstances surrounding Arena, it's just tough out there in the streets right now. 

I understand what you are saying, but there is no way that happened overnight.

This is possibly related, but who knows. There were many teams at roughly the same level as me that did the same 2900 to 3500 yo-yo everyday that I would typically see on the same refresh page multiple times a day everyday, but after several hundred refreshes since the patch, NONE of them have showed up on my list, but I guarantee they are out there.

All I am saying is that Plarium has absolutely monkeyed around with arena matchmaking in the recent patch, and I am interested in knowing what changed.

Well, had a long feedback discussion with them today about this in particular. I've passed on all of your thoughts. Perhaps we shall hear something soon, it was a lengthy chat. 

There has certainly been an apparent change in matchmaking, but it likely is from G5 finally being fully populated a reset or two ago, which then stretched and pressed the fill parameters below it. I can say that Gold5 has tighter and more difficult matchmaking than the other Gold levels below it, as it is intended by Plarium that people work for the position that lets them push Plat. No easy defenses, or it is intended that you fall out of G5, is what was conveyed.

So those G5 matchmaking rules, which have been active since G5 intro, could be putting downwards pressure on G4. Basically, people need to leave their full-on defense in to be not just in Plat anymore, but also in Gold 5. Which means we have a lot of people at 3350-3500 that have fallen out of Gold 5, or that are pushing into Gold 5, that ALSO have their full defenses in 100% of the time. Which means someone at 3200 ALSO needs to have their full defenses in. And that pushes downwards and downwards until it hits G3 eventually, then, down the road, G2.

That also means that people need to play more to keep up. And couple that with an Arena tourney during a fusion, and we BOTH were hit TONS, @bighathrsl. I don't think my defense had ever been hit so much.

But like I said, I had a long chat with them about the good, productive feedback I have been seeing about the ramping of difficulty. So we shall see. Of course, any changes or updates about arena and such will be a bit slower right now with their staff scattered about the Ukraine taking shelter or called up to service.

I'm a super new player. i found this game after getting bored of playing with disney cartoons in Hero Wars LOL

Just logged on day 40, so like i said.... super new. Here's what happens in arena for new players if you're out of touch some because you've been in higher leagues for a while.

You get through bronze 1-4 pretty easily, as soon as you understand the very basic mechanics of the game. Then you get promoted to silver 1, and here you find out that the basics are now almost worthless. It's being replaced by one thing alone. Speed. Doesnt matter what team you have, just be quicker and you win, slower and you lose. I sometimes beat 4 legendaries with 3 rares + High Khatun.... Like i said. speed speed speed speed. Now stuck in silver III with almost no hope of going higher unless....

This is when you realize that farming dungeons and maps is all a waste of time if your immediate goal is to to improve in arena. Nope. Only one thing to do, and farm it all day every day. Map 6-6 and map 6-7. And you get super excited when you get common 5-star speed boots LOL...  Or if you're a glutton for punishment, you farm the dragon all day every day, and you scream at your PC 8x out of 9 because you didnt get a speed set item, and of that 1 in 9 time, probably another 9 of 10 ends up being garbage because no speed on the item

All you older players will say "Ya well this is the game, get used to it". That's fine, but having one stat DOMINATE all other stats in the game is kinda ridiculous. I'm at the point now that i realize when you farm artifacts of any kind for any toon, you check it, speed? keep. No speed? garbage. I suspect you old timers have even more tuned criterias, something like check for items with speed, then roll to level 8 or 12, if no extra speed rolls, garbage. 3-star common speed boots from speed set are 10x better than 6-star boots from any set if there's no speed on them..... ok ok...

So my question is, whats the point of having 50 different sets if only one stat matters in the end? You have a toon with 100% CC and 150% CD and tons of attack. If he's slow, he'll never attack anyways so powering up your champions wirh anything other than speed is pointless (for arena of course)

I think maybe one way to fix arena would be quite simple. Make all boots speed boots by default, like weapons have automatic attack and shield automatic defense. This would reduce the huge gaps between players more easily. Maybe make the helmets have random 1st stats instead of the boots. If everyone has similar speed builds, then maybe other stats would actually matter a little more

At least i get my fun from playing PVE where speed is not the almighty god of stats. You need to get a little more creative than just making your toon faster to beat the dungeons. In arena? fast = wins, slow = losses, nothing else matters. It must be hell at G2 and higher levels. Going up against +4 legendaries backed with maxed out factions (for the +10 speed stat)... damn damn double damn LOL

thanks, really appreciate the info.

I will say this part doesn't quite ring true in my case:

"And couple that with an Arena tourney during a fusion, and we BOTH were hit TONS, @bighathrsl. I don't think my defense had ever been hit so much."

prior to the recent patch, I was hitting my daily loss limit about 6 hours after reset.  I would be attacked many, many times starting at reset and go from ~3500 points down to ~2900 points. From then on, my offensive wins plus the many defensive wins I would get through the night and next day would carry me right back up to 3500 by the time of the daily reset.  Many times I would be at 3500 several hours prior to reset.

Now, when I look at my battle log, I have been attacked a total of 7 times almost 3 hours after reset whereas before it would have been several dozen times by now.  It has been like this all week since the latest patch.

This is all fairly fair criticism. And frankly, you are at least farming that 6-6 and 6-7 life to get those common 6 star speed boots you will use into super late game. :)

And, to top it all off, when you get enough speed to get into G5, now you have to fight through crazy durable Go Second teams that can take the hardest hits you can throw out, then turn around and smack you dead one by one. Where speed doesn't even matter anymore because it is all so ludricrous that people don't even try to fight on that axis anymore.

Basically, eventually you reach a point where only speed seems to matter, in Silver and low Gold... then later you reach a point where only some specific champs that enable crazy good, OP, go second teams matter.

The trick in all of this is to either 1) do what everyone else is doing but better.... so go faster, or pull more champs to get MORE meta champs.... or 2) build teams that are designed to go against the prevalent strats.

Stoneskin Cardinal teams are an attempt at 2. As are Frenzy set Yoshi teams that try and jump into the turn order. As are damage Hege's whose whole job is to kill the squishy nuker, and prevent the revive with a Lydia or Gamuran. As are these super super slow Vogoth teams with Ursaga and/or Duchess or Nekhret or etc....

Yes exactly. But i actually chose not to farm 6-6 and 6-7 all day LOL. Problem is, if you start doing that at the stage where i'm at, you stop advancing everything else. So doing a bit of 6-6/6-7 is certainly part of the daily routine, there's much more to be gained for me by farming potion keeps or blitzing an occasional dungeon tournament for a top3 position.

I think for right now its probably better for me to focus on getting 10-12 good heroes with different abilities so i can mix and match for different content instead of perfecting one single arena team. Perhaps that will come in time once i have done the former. You probably forgot how hard the FW maps are at the beginning. Finding 70 good champions AND equipping them just to get through levels 1 to 6 is actually still a  quite a challenge LOL. Every new login, i go in advanced quests and pray there's no "beat a faction war boss" that day :P

I'm an almost F2P (I did buy a starter pack of gems to get me going). Got lucky by pulling Kyoku with a bllue shard early on, but since then, only got a few epics, half of which would be considered high quality food by most standards. So far it looks like getting legendary champions as a F2P is not so easy.

But it doesnt matter. Having Kyoku gets me through a lot of content i probably couldnt win otherwise. Alas, she's not super super in arena, not bad per say, but not OP either

Big problem is that S4 is exactly the same...But this is not then big problem here...I think it is in Speed mechanic -  it become more hack, than duel....And there are another thing that botter me even a lot - half of heroes in game are unusable in arena...in all other parts of the game this may be normal, but in PvP part this is very very bad...

As you advance you will see that Kyoku is absolutely AMAZING in Arena. What a lucky pull. One of the best Go Second arena champs ever made.

This ability is amazing, AND she can still AoE with Blood Curdle right after, placing Dec Atk on the entire enemy team.

i

And her passive is Seeker's passive but BETTER:

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Add to that a 30% Def Aura in ALL BATTLES and she is the literal Queen of Go Second teams. And should be an absolute BEAST against Dungeon Bosses and in Doom Tower.

So seriously congrats. Beats me waiting for several months to pull ANY legendary at all. :)

Ah yes, i kinda suspected that. Perhaps i just dont have the champs to surround her better yet. I noticed she's really hard to kill. But really finely speed-tuned teams go through my whole squad in seconds in arena. Especially since at my level almost every opponent has a magic affinity team as defense (all starters being blue of course). Kyoku being green is somewhat at disadvantage

But ya i'm real happy about that find. Managed to build a decent CB team around her with HK and Elhain and Warpriest and Gravechill KIller.  The priest will go soon, but for now, i got nothing better.

I put her in a reflex set to help reduce the cooldowns a little (those books are still hard to come by for me, so that set helps a lot). Even 4-star rares of that set does the job :P

PS.: about her being a "go-second", would you advise me to put her in my lead instead of trying to win the speed race with High Khatun (which i almost never do LOL)? And build a defensive team instead? Would that help me?

In my experience, go second teams are not viable until you get to end game with OP gear/meta champs.

I love "go second" teams.  I search them out with my squishy fast team, figure out what they are going to try to do, stop that since I go first, then wipe them out.  Most of the time, at least at my mid-tier level, go second teams don't go at all.

First of all, a more general advice: this game is made for long term playing. The devs want the users to stay in game for years. The log-in rewards go on even after day 270 (if I remember, you can see only that far at the start). So you don't have to rush anywhere. 

And for go second teams: yes, that are teams that are supposed to go second, as the name indicates. Don't race for speed, just defense, hp and res. Let them do their stuff, survive, hit back.

The reason, why most people start with a speed team is, that the champs for the most basic speed composition are free. High Khatun from log-in reward + starter champ + Warmaiden and Spirithost from campaign. To build a go second team you need champs with a passive like Kyoku.

Don't underestimate the stat requirements for a go 2nd team. You don't go for the speed race, but you still need very good gear for all champs. You need hp and def to survive their hit, and you need high resistance on all champs. Otherwise every team with a control debuff just destroys you: they go first, do some damage, maybe not enough to kill you, but your champs are injured. And then, without resistance, one of them like Ninja is putting freeze on all your team members (or provoke, stun, fear, sleep). The only thing your team does is unfreezing, no actions. The go again, attack your allready injured team. Maybe in silver 1, opponents don't run that many champs with control debuffs, but later on, that's quite commen. As a further aspect, resistance helps to prevent their decrease def debuff landing on your team, lowering the damage you have to take. Last, but not least a go 2nd team still needs some speed, to prevent that they can go twice before you got your first turn.

Arena is true lotery... 

even if we prapare, aways are supprise defedet. but now 90% fights finishes a supprise die...

I imaging a lot of top players are Russian, due to the current awful events they cannot access raid.

I wonder if we are seeing the effect of G5 russian players dropping rank?

The latest changes are bad for the arena 

1.  I'm now nervous attacking anyone in m,y list, the teams ahead of me are mostly out of my league so unless I get lucky I'm not winning, that does not mean I shouldn't be in my tier, I'm getting teams from the tier above, as yet I'm not strong enough for the next tier but I shouldn't be punished for that, I've got to my tier because I am strong enough for this tier and I should fight others in my tier

2.  If I attack someone lower than me (which does not mean I'm picking on lower power teams) if I win I get stupid points - I got two in one battle.  If I lose I get hammered - 16 points in one battle

3.  Swift parry, reaction gear, stoneskin - you can't build teams 'in case' the opposition has some of these sets

4. They are breaking the balance of the game with ridiculously over powered new champs, if you want to keep the balance in games, (and if you don't ultimately players leave and the game dies,) they gave Lydia a 100% block, not even 10% for each dead enemy, ignores block revive, gets an extra turn, is described 'Lydia is an extremely powerful champion for most content in Raid Shadow Legends. Hence, she could not be summoned from a Void Shard else it enables player to complete the game too quickly!  - wheres the balance for that, it just says you can finish the game without Lydia, this is for PVP not PVE and basicallyin PVE you have no defence if you have revivers in your team as attackers will find your defence with revivers and attack, the AI will use revive boom you're dead. Nekhret - again, just why?   Apart from arena why did the game need champs like this, every area was beatable without them

At the moment I don't really care, I've seen all these issues raised and whilst usually well meaning replies are let us help with your roster, some are 'it's how it is deal with it, end gamers usually, Hell Hades has done really good videos on this very subject so nothing I say will make a difference, I'll play till I hit the wall and get bored then find a game that looks after it's player base better

Dont forget the new Nari against the go 2nd teams speed, will rule more

Hi All. 

Many interesting theory's and comments regarding Arena being crap. It is obvious that most people do not enjoy arena. I do not and would not participate but i is the only way to build the great hall. Why is there not another way to build the hall? Why force us to do things we dispise? This is a game and it should be fun. 

I still don't understand why adding a Gold 5 Tier would make things worse in Gold 4. Logic suggests that much more was changed in the arena in the update than we were told. 

I quit because of arena.  I'm still waiting for them to finally come up with a fix that doesn't break arena.  Doesn't look as if it is here yet.  I'll just continue checking back, until I either give up or a change happens that makes it more enjoyable.

Don't even get me started on 3v3.