A few figures about arena

Gameplay Chat (PC/Mobile)
1

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!

Players

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…
Weapon

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

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

500-1000

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

1000-1100

It is even worse…
45 Runic blades, 5 Dawnbringers, 4 Broken Guards.

lvl > 1 100

1100

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.

23 Likes
2

Sirrian said almost one month ago that they will remove the defense teams containing Dawnbringer, and we don’t have any news…
Adding a filter that check if one team contains one troop/weapon should not be that difficult to implement…

And thanks for the data :wink: .

1 Like
3

I don’t play any arena right now (level 1050), but I do wish I played more. While I don’t have much to add to the conversation, I wanted to thank you for this post. It was a great read and well stated of what the problem is.

The buying of old event weapons is one thing that gets me. I bought crescendo when it came around within the past year but I don’t have any of those other weapons. I don’t even check the weekly weapon each week because I just don’t think it’ll be worth the $5. Wish they had the option to buy those with glory every now and then.

Maybe do a special semi-annual sale where all weapons are available for glory, with no traitstones in the packs. Gives a way for players to catch up and complete their collection, without releasing a ton of traitstones to the game.

1 Like
4

Why is everyone suddenly coming out of the woodwork about Arena? Has everyone run and hide there rather than face trollpocalypse?

2 Likes
5

Dawnbringer was added a few weeks ago and by this point enough people have DB that it’s become a problem.

6

Yeah, I know it really unbalances things, I’m just shocked at all the people coming out of the woodworks to complain about Arena. Who are all these people playing it, and why are they?!

1 Like
7

I don’t play it but i know lot of guildmates doing it, it’s the fastest way to farm trophy and you see more team variety then pvp

3 Likes
8

I tend to play arena a lot as it is a bit more strategic in regards to unit choice/use. Plus I’m still fairly low level so the rewards for getting 8 wins is quite substantial for me, especially seeing as I used to blitz every battle in Arena, now, not so much, it is no longer even worth it for me to try an arena run unless it’s a daily task.

9

Thanks for the post lot of good info there. I think DB is the only real problem as far as “weapons” in Arena imo. RB is powerful but it’s nothing compared to DB. I beat a RB opponent 95% of the time. However DB is only beat if I can get the opponents “hero” killed before they cast…so maybe 40% of the time I’m beating those opponents (I’m over 1,100 as well). They need a fix ASAP as arena is the only fun remaining strategic turn “game” left in GoW the current Meta PvP teams are all a coin toss 2 or 3 turn looping disaster (and I’m always in the top 1-50 ranks so yes I play it a lot but it’s mind numbingly boring but still the best way to get gold).

Cheers
Calvin

1 Like
10

Dawnbringer is still pretty rare on xbox.

11

For me, it used to be a fun distraction from the weekly PvP grind. Something you could do in between, sort of like some players enjoy playing treasure maps. Dawnbringer pretty much put a stop to that. To compete, I feel like I’d have to use Dawnbringer myself, which would just make the situation even worse for those other players without it.

1 Like
12

I fully agree.
It is just that using Runic blade is the easy option when someone plays arena. If it was a little less powerful, people would be less “lazy” and a little bit more creative. :stuck_out_tongue:

13

As @Rickygervais said, it is the fastest way to make trophies currently, so all the top guilds are grinding in arena.

I have always been mainly an arena player, because I find PVP boring and arena much more interesting. There seem to be quite a few people like me.

2 Likes
14

I find that very interesting… Do you get trophies for each battle, plus the bonus 30 at the end for 8 wins? I always thought it was just the 30 trophies.

While that’s better than 3 trophies per battle, the battles seem slower to me.

15

No, only the 30 trophies at the end. Which is why the problem of Dawnbringer is so crucial. It has a very important impact on the rewards, and not only trophies.

Arena used to be slower than PVP, although it depends on how fast you play PVP and what troops you have been able to pick. But nothing is faster than arena with Dawnbringer.

16

not everyone, i havent touch arena for ages

17

When you get bored with the Kraken meta (or TDS Meta if you aren’t high-level), you go to Arena. People didn’t complain about Kraken meta before Kraken was meta. Then it was, and now people complain about it.

Now when you go to Arena you face Dawnbringer meta until you’re bored with that. Dawnbringer didn’t exist a little while ago, when no one really complained about Arena. Now Dawnbringer exists. I wonder what changed, right?

Next the devs need to figure out how to make Explore do the same encounter every time.

Me, I’m enjoying Treasure Map meta. There aren’t any instant-lose or looping teams there.

(Also: for serious:

Arena’s a great source of souls for players who haven’t built up a strong soul-farming team yet. It gives a lot of trophies for 8 wins. It also spits out a lot of gold. If you’re bored with PvP because you’ve been running the same offense teams for a while, Arena’s a great place to go get a different experience. Unless you face 5x Dawnbringer teams in a row.)

5 Likes