No photos, please (given where on human anatomy a cutie mark would be placed). This is already edging into “things Grundulum doesn’t need to know” territory, and a photo of @Slypenslyde’s cutie mark would put us so far over the line it would look like a point.
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He could just PM it to me 
No no no we wanna see. This is in the internet. If you don’t wanna get burned, stay out of the bathroom.
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Meh… speaking out of the chorus, I’m not personally thrilled by the change. I could win Arena with runic blade before I got DB, on a daily basis (yes it was challenging, but too easy is no fun). Now that I have it, “normal” difficulty is a tad too easy, making Arena another grind, and upper difficulty levels are not really bringing interesting rewards.
Thinking out loud:
- Don’t remove DB if the player is also using DB (seems fair no?)
- Keep as is, but have interesting prizes (trophies) scale up with the difficulty level
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It has been a long time since the issue was first raised and it was nice to play in the arena after 5 months of quitting.
Thank you devs for the change.
I even had a chance to use the crescendo which i bought and never used, so certainly it added some variety in my offense too.
People who think the arena is a cake walk should put aside the dawn bringer and try a different weapon.
It can add to your GOW love life 
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Put … aside … DB??
Whatcha smoking there?
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Are you stuttering?
It seems rather you’re showing DB withdrawal symptoms 
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Good, glad to hear it. Just remember that not everyone has a fully traited Hero with all the mega weapons…
I’d just like to add my thanks for this. I haven’t played in Arena for a long time because there was no enjoyment in facing a team that could wipe me out in a few moves and it was just a waste of time.
So thanks for listening, Devs 
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Indeed.
I’m going to start a bring DB back thread for balance.
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Here is a handy-dandy guide to what you should do if you find Arena too easy.
- If you’re using Dawnbringer, stop using Dawnbringer. It’s like you’re standing in a fire ant pile and complaining it hurts.
- If you’re using Runic Blade, consider stopping that. It’s my go-to weapon but, like Dawnbringer, it has a very high tendency to snowball a match.
- If you’re still a hot dog who never loses a match ever, peep the difficulty slider. See where it says “Normal”? Make it say “Hard” or “Warlord IV”.
Remember what the advice was for dealing with Dawnbringer before? “Get better”? This is what it feels like. “Get worse”, and Arena gets harder. There are dozens of weapons, and no one’s making you use the ones that are very powerful. Want a challenge? Pick only newbie weapons. Still not challenging enough? Let the opponent get unfair stat scaling. The power is in your hands.
If your response is “but then I won’t get trophies as fast” then hush. Your goal is “farming trophies”, not “having a challenge”. Your life just got better.
I do think a “hard mode” Arena with Dawnbringer would be interesting. Nothing like facing the inevitable, eventual 95% Dawnbringer pool, I guess. I did like the matches against it occasionally. I had some ideas for that above. Maybe someone should make a thread about it and spend 6+ months advocating for it. I’m not against it, and would support a lot of ideas.
What I don’t support is taking a mode that I believe is philosophically meant to remove the advantages higher-level players have and forcing a high-level player advantage upon everybody. That was wrong, and it’s been fixed. And while I’m very proud for you if you still go 500-0 in Arena on Warlord IV while voluntarily refusing to use anything but skull damage, that makes you in the very high “above average” group. Not everyone needs that level of play.
My cutie mark has been requested, so here it is.
Windows give us views into places we perhaps otherwise cannot reach. In a pinch, they can be doorways into those places.
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There is NO way I am reaching where that window seems to lead. None. At. All.
(Those were some very cogent points regarding Dawnbringer, though!)
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I’m actually really excited because I’ve always wanted to do a series where I try Arena 2-3 times with every weapon (I have) and do a quick writeup about how each one feels. Part of why I never started down that trail is I felt it’d be boring to write “too ineffective vs. Dawnbringer” for all but about a dozen.
The Shentang weapon hits deceptively hard. I lost my first “Dawnbringerless Arena” match to one because I wasn’t used to respecting it. Kingslayer also demands respect. Most of the weapons that replace Dawnbringer are good at executing your support troops in the way a good Runic Blade AI tends to do. But absolutely no one used those weapons before because practically everyone who could is using:
- Dawnbringer
- Black Manacles
- Runic Blade
It’s not often I encounter another one of the top-tier weapons, and a neat side effect of this fix is I’ve seen weapons I’ve never faced before for the first time in months.
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Just let it go already, you got your DB ‘fix’, celebrate it, enjoy your Arena games and be done with it. No need to continue talking down to people that dislike this change for whatever reasons.
You can’t keep bathing in your own righteousness and call everyone that disagreed with you on this issue bitter making false assumptions about these peoples actions and motivations and not appear like a bitter gloating gnome yourself in the end.
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Eh, no, this is the thread where I’m going to bask in the excitement of Arena more or less being restored to how it behaved when I found it fun. It’s an appropriate place.
I’m not being sarcastic or snide at all when I say I think a secondary mode that does allow DB on defense would be cool. I think it warrants slightly better rewards, since players in general lose more games to DB than other weapons. I like this mode being secondary so we get all of these things:
- Players focused solely on farming trophies can weigh the rewards of the two modes and do what they feel is best.
- Players focused solely on “a break from PvP” can choose which one they want.
- New players don’t have to worry about being boxed out of Arena at level 200 until they unlock better weapons.
- Old players who want “easy” can get it, at the cost of “lower rewards”.
Choices are always better than not having them. I used to be upset because I was forced to fight challenging opponents in a mode where I didn’t want to be challenged. Now other players are upset because they aren’t challenged in a mode where they want to be challenged. If you want to fight for “let’s have both” I’ll haunt that thread as frequently as I did the “get rid of DB on defense” thread and I will support you.
My only concern for that mode is I feel like the defense pool will eventually be almost nothing but Dawnbringer, but there are always ways to coerce players to change up their style.
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I actually believe you would, though that fight would be futile so i’d rather not start it and plague the forum with more futile threads.
Ahh the dream.
Anyways, i have come to change my mind about the fix, and while i still think it is uneeded, seeing the mostly happy reactions to it in this thread i think the Devs made the right call.
But i don’t enjoy reading the ongoing misrepresentations and false assumptions about the motivations of me and others that wanted defense DB kept in Arena. Switching to higher difficulty does not create the same ‘spicy’ dynamic DB fights had, it just makes games longer.
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I’ve been playing some Arena matches today and it’s been interesting working my way up the Difficulty Levels to try and find the “Sweet Spot” where it’s a challenge, without being a walk-over for either side and getting sufficient rewards for facing and overcoming (mostly) that challenge.
That, IMO, is how Arena should be (although it would still be nice if I could pick my own banner…!)
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I’ve been thinking of a response to this thread since it went up, and I think I have gathered my thoughts into some form of coherency.
There was a lot of talk earlier about the state of the community, with @Sheba and @Slypenslyde having valid points. However, I thought I could shed a little light on this for everyone. Community sentiments come in waves. These can change depending on the state of the game, but typically follow highs and lows around major updates. We see similar patterns over time within all communities. These patterns also include positivity and negativity, with each having a natural ebb and flow.
With that being said, I do not believe that our community is toxic. In fact, at the moment it is more positively skewed when we take into account our other social media platforms. It is a fact of life that people will join and leave communities, and this is nothing to be feared. Of course, us devs miss certain players, but it’s perfectly normal for the life cycle of communities and their members.
It is also common with game communities in particular to have reactions along the lines of this thread when changes are implemented. The internet plays a role in this, as does game/gamer culture. Would we have liked a little more excitement and gratitude over the Dawnbringer fix? Sure! Did we expect it? Absolutely not. At the end of the day, we are glad we could fix something that was affecting so many players, and are happy with the change we implemented.
Our dev team is one of the most active I have ever seen in terms of listening to player feedback and responding when possible it is because of you that this fix was brought, and through the feedback you give us we frequently make quality of life improvements. In terms of other places I have worked and game communities I have been part of, Gems of War and its’ developers go above and beyond when it comes to utilising player/community feedback.
TLDR; communities are ever changing and move in cycles. This is a great example of that.
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It’s been 3 days. Where’s my doomskull nipple ring fix?
You’re gonna be super busy next week. So if not now… Then just forget it. 
Excuse you, as much as it hurts me to say it, I am too busy doing social to shoop nipples right now.
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