Just make plat diamond Grand Master real players and gold and lower fake players.

The  5x  hit  limit  appears  to  only  apply  to  Gold.    Silver  on  down  is  a  brutal  feeding  frenzy.    I  personnaly  am  stuck  in  silver  hell  and  clawing  to  get  to  the  promise  land  of  gold.    i  just  don't  have  the  time  or  gems  to  constantly  refresh  and  on  top  of  that,  I  keep  getting  slammed  down  a  level  on  the  weekly  arena  reset.     i  now  despise  arena to  no  end but  keep  trying...  i  must  be  insane  since  i  expect  a  different  outcome.    I  was  in  gold  back  in  the  good  old  days  but  man,  this  sucks.

Try to get past the initial boundary. Once you get enough past that goalpost, you shouldn't need to worry too much about dropping back down. You're essentially capped to losing a max of around 40 points per day, so as long as you're above that threshold at the end of the day, you should be okay.

Also, the further up you get, the more you'll find people leaving easily beatable teams.

All that said - I do caution that I'm sure this system will be temporary. What you refer to as "the good old days" won't be back. You'll have to make an actually decent arena team, so you may as well get started while the goings are easy.

I am stuck in Silver 3-4.  It looks like 3-6 months of grinding Dragon20 to get better gear.  Or a few lucky shard pulls.  

Perhaps not. A clanmate of mine was able to get into gold by just refreshing and finding teams they could beat. It's a risky endevour since you are using gems, but if you're able to get there, the rewards are certainly great.

I am retired so I play all day and refresh every 15 mins.  Its still hard to find battles.  

Really?

I went from at least winning one team per refresh to  NOT winning anything in 10 refreshes.

Well done Morons.

Time to find another game.

Not anymore.  The algorithem they just changed removed that.  I've gone up to 20 refreshes without seeing anything but teams that I know I cannot beat.

Shrug. Grind it out higher. I can tell you from where I'm looking, it's still absolutely effortless to find teams to beat.

The medals in general are still a HUGE issue.  

Needing 3 maxed great Hall stats in the middle of a ton of easy missions is a joke.

Even if arena does improve with the changes, it's still an insane grind, and a grind that takes up that much time and resources ends up being no fun.  The game should be fun.