Adding to my own concerns. Its getting worse every run. 5 out of 8 Dawnbreakers in a recent arena run. Its time for some developer input to get more variation than overloads of Dawnbreaker or even the managable but often repeatable Runic blade. When there are over 100 hero weapons its a shame its just Dawnbreaker dominating the arena. If the developers want us players to vary teams we need varied teams to face. Of course we will constantly try to counter Dawnbreaker by selecting the solid weapons like Hammer of Urskaya or just hope for luck in card combinations to do maximum damage to it first. Vodyanoi is good if it comes up in card selection- its triple damage combined with a hero hit and a skull hit or two - but boy its hard work each and every time Dawnbreaker appears and we are just talking a standard normal arena setting. Bring the fun back to the arena please.
You must be playing different game than I because I hardly ever face DB but I digress. Runic on the other hand are all over the place but you can use it as well
Just make it 4 random troops and stop this nonsense.
Wow Courtaud, often the simplest ideas are the best, common rising to epic for the 4th troop sounds utterly wonderful.
I don’t think they should get rid of the “draft” in favor of total randomness. If they were to eliminate the Hero, at least they could let us see all 12 potential troops at once so that we have a better chance at putting together a team of complementary troops.
I meant to give another three-troops choice, as for the other three troops in the team. Make it a Epic or even a Legendary.
(Even if at the moment the possibility of getting a team of complementary trops in the Arena is rather slim.)
There are so many possible variations on Arena, every Kingdom could have a Mini-game of its own.
What makes me sad is:
- A considerable majority seems to agree it’s an unfair weapon for arena on defense.
- There are lots of attractive ways to deal with the problem and the same majority seems to like most of them.
- We all cynically believe none of the above will ever be adopted.
i want them to make all weapons on par with db instead 
Dawnbringer in the arena on a normal basic player setting is getting beyond frustration. It is an extremely demanding opponent on ‘normal’ developers. Yes it can be countered but it makes for slow ardous play-surely not the aim or intent of Gems… Yes keep it for higher arena settings- in fairness to players who have outlayed their 1m souls- but there is nothing reasonable currently about confronting DB at the base setting. I mean if you got it occassionally you would cope- but repeatedly several times in a row is arrant casual gaming nonsense. Reset the arena in some way- reduce the rewards on the normal setting if necessary because DB is souring the arena experince bigtime.
As already stated, the best solution is just to remove the hero/weapons from arena and just run on 4 troops which are picked from the random pool process.
Agreed, though I’m not sure it’s cynical when we’re correct that nothing has been done about it. I quit doing arena completely. It’s a futile waste of money when I’m still building all my kingdoms to lvl 10.
I’m not sure how arena works with my teams that won, for example. After a while they must drop off out of the game. If I’m right, then that would account for more and more DB’s aside from more players attaining them. Fewer winning teams; more DB’s. Lose/lose.
It was poor planning to bring in such a heavy handed weapon without testing the balance first. It was a further mistake to not monitor the gameplay and nerf it if necessary through hotfixes before it got to this stage. Yes those who bought it would be angry but fewer than are angry now. I’m not even angry. I just wrote off a hugely enjoyable part of the game because apparently the devs only care the pay to play or high level player base. If that’s the case then what next new thing will come out to ruin another part of the game for those who can ill-afford the souls for these weapons/troops etc?
I can’t see a problem with removing all weapons from defense teams. I don’t believe the console has weapons, does it? Just do it, devs.
Consoles do have weapons in defence teams.
Thank you. Ok well it’s still not a bad idea to remove either the weapons or Heroes. I vote to remove the heroes and just use a rare, ultra, epic and legendary pick or one “octave” down.
or
As I mentioned, remove the weapons from defense teams.
Oh mighty @Ozball,
Please go into the arena database and replace dawn bringer with hero sword. I know enemy arena team info is server side, so it can be done! Be that hero to save arena! Or filter out on that weapon code if you have to.
Before I got certain legendaries, I found Arena worked out best for me in terms of gold/souls per unit time spent. Even with Dawnbringer around, it was generally hard for me to fall behind, and the main thing was I gained souls a lot faster in Arena than I would in Explore/PvP. PvP was particularly challenging since kingdom bonuses applied there.
Now that I have a couple of good-performing teams, it’s much faster and more profitable for me to play PvP or Explore matches. I haven’t touched Arena in at least two weeks because of it.
I like @FREDDY’s suggestion of leaving Dawnbringer on higher settings but I don’t think he understands how difficulty works in GoW. OR: I don’t understand how they work in arena.
My understanding is difficulty scales the opponent stats, so you’re getting increased rewards for playing on a handicap. But since Arena leaves you “weakened” without most of your bonuses, giving the opponent scaled stats is a lot worse than it might usually be. I’m curious if an arena team exists that could beat a Warlord II Dawnbringer.
@UKresistance seriously? I don’t play often arena but when i do i only see dawnbringer 1/8 it’s not as bad as everyone is saying.
I don’t think it’s as bad on xbox, at least not until pharos ra gets forgable. But it really should be fixed.
PC/Mobile had a year more than us for end-game players to pile up souls. I get about the same as you on PS4 (maybe 1/8 Dawnbringers in an arena run), but I understand why PC/Mobile players are upset about this and agree that it needs to change. The feedback loop that @SallyOMally described above is going to make it worse (only winning teams show up in Arena and after a certain point, only teams with Dawnbringer can win anymore, therefore everyone faces only Dawnbringer teams). That effectively makes Arena an extreme end-game player mode only, which is the exact opposite of what it should be.
If it’s not Dawnbringer, it’s Runic Blade… so a somewhat OP weapon that makes each battle easy…
I also farm Arena with my Dawnbringer in a no-brain style and when I’m fighting versus another Dawnbringer, the battle became the “whi will get most mana surges than the other”… But I don’t believe that Arena was designed for doing that.
As mentionned several times by others and myself, Hero shouldn’t have their seat in this mode, else why he’s always in 1st slot? Because his attack is so huge compared to troops… His spell is so great… Etc.
So yeah put an Epic troop as the 4th choice and at the same time modify the inferface so we can choose our 4 troops at the same time.