Lately I have been taking note of the level of my opponents in arena and the weapon they were using.
I am well aware that my sample is much too small to be reliable. But as we don’t have any official stats about arena, I thought it could be better than nothing and be of some use to the current discussions about arena and Dawnbringer.
I have gathered data on 500 opponents. The first 313 were until October 15. I made a break during my guild’s push week. And the 186 other are the opponents I have faced since October 23.
WHO PLAYS ARENA?
Everyone!
As could be expected, there are many “new” players farming souls and endgamers farming trophies, but all the levels are present in arena.
It would be interesting to know what percentage of the players each category represents, but I don’t think that those data are available anywhere?
WHICH WEAPON USE ARENA PLAYERS?
No surprise there, sadly…
The situation seem to be getting worse each week. Until October 15, 20% of my opponents had Dawnbringer and 40% Runic blade. Since October 23, it has been 22% for Dawnbringer and 38% for Runic blade.
Besides, until October 15 the players using Dawnbringer were all lvl 1100+ and all those I “knew” were from top 50 guilds - top 10 guilds most of the time. Last week I have started encoutering lvl 1000 - 1100 players who had Dawnbringer, some of which were not in top 50 guilds. One was even from a guild I had never heard of.
That is more than 1 opponent out of 5 that has Dawnbringer. More than 2 out of 10. There is a good probability for a new player to encounter more than 1 opponent with Dawnbringer during his 8 battles and to see their chances of getting a perfect run ruined if they are not lucky.
MORE DETAILS…
- lvl 200 - 500
Even among beginners Runic blade is everywhere… I have faced it in 59 battles.
The weapons who come next have been used only 7 times for Crude club, Sword of heroes, Dragon fire and Morthani’s Scythe, 6 times for Mang and 5 times for Crypt keeper.
One could wonder if beginners use Crude club or Sword of heroes because they don’t know that the weapon can be chosen. But maybe it is rather a strategy, and an interesting one. A weapon that gets filled very fast may not be sufficient against Dawnbringer, but it can be very efficient against everything else.
lvl 500 - 1 000
What little variety existed at the lowest levels has already disappeared here.
70 Runic blades. The second most used weapon is Black manacles with only 4 occurrences!
lvl 1 000 - 1 100
It is even worse…
45 Runic blades, 5 Dawnbringers, 4 Broken Guards.
lvl > 1 100
100 Dawnbringer (63 out of 92 battles until October 15, 37 out of 51 battles since October 23!!!)
24 Runic blades
Only 1 occurrence of everything else.
It is sad to see that, while arena can be so interesting on the point of view of strategy and there are so many good weapons.
WHAT IS GOING WRONG WITH ARENA
Arena is the part of the game where players can compete on an equal foot whatever their level is. In theory. Unfortunately it is not the case anymore at all, and arena is completely disbalanced in favour of the endgamers, which is unfair. For 2 reasons.
→ Dawnbringer
No surprise. Everyone knows it is OP. Although more and more people are crafting it, which will make arena very soon unplayable for most of the players, only a happy few can afford it for the moment. The happy few who have many souls, the souls that new players badly need and that they should be hoping to gain in arena.
→ Event weapons
Some of the best weapons in arena are event weapons: Spark rocket 2.0.16, Sun & Moon, Fire & Ice, Withering touch, Crescendo…
Gathering those data made me realize that only high level / endgame players have them and occasionally use them.
The new players don’t have any chance to get them now unless they pay when one of them is available in the shop.
GoW used to be a game where each player could get everything if they played enough or were patient enought. Sadly it is not the case anymore. That problem of the event weapons illustrates perfectly the new direction tthat the game has sadly been taking this year.
CONCLUSION
Arena needs seriously to be reworked, nothing new.
As it will probably not happen before many months, it would be urgent in the meantime to remove Dawnbringer from the defense teams we can face.
Although probably noone will agree with me, I would add that Runic blade needs to be nerfed. Even the devs have admitted lately (I can’t find where) that it had always been overpowered for arena. It would encourage more creativity and make arena more interesting.