I stopped doing blood frenzy battles. Mainly because of the steep increase in the opponents stats. Found I would lose more often simply because the opponent was 1 shotting my team a lot more often on their 1st or 2nd turn. And in the time it would take to win, I could have played 2-4 easier battles in Central Spire and earned the same amount of VP or more.
I also think it’s dumb that Monolith battles don’t give you at least some VP.
The PvP pass is a true masterpiece in misdesign, I’ve never seen a game botch it up worse. 
Things to understand:
PvP is disliked by the vast majority of players, because it’s a huge seasonal grind that requires dozens of battles each day. Enter the carrot.
1.) Free Pass
Most rewards can’t be unlocked, most prominently the best ones at the end of the reward track. Players can chose to grind less without missing out anything.
2.) Paid Pass
All rewards can be unlocked. Players are forced to do the whole repetitive season grind or forfeit the juicy rewards they paid for in advance.
Other games actually realized that players are perfectly fine with paying up to skip part of a boring activity, so buying a season pass tends to get your extra progress. To my knowledge, it’s just Gems of War that actively punishes players for spending money, and apparently even years of community feedback are unable to change that. I believe the previous community manager once mentioned that the lead designer is too busy drawing poop emojis to care.
Most games I’ve played separate the Season/Battle Pass and the pay to skip tiers version of the same Pass.
I would never pay extra to skip since it encourages those devs to make these things more terrible to make it worth skipping and it’s usually overpriced anyways. Now if they want to put extra value into it on top of skipping, I’ll consider giving it a look.
Gems of War has never actually succeeded with me in making me pay extra to skip (Elite Pass+) since their very philosophy makes it impossible to do so.
Philosophy: Underdeliver so players don’t get mad from nerfing rewards, then adjust upwards (but then be lazy and never adjust anything)
Free Pass: Yeah, they really don’t offer much of anything on the free side. A bit laughable, really.
I agree , paying to skip doing work.
Imo is scummy at the highest level.
It’s like saying, the more money you have, the less you have to do. And the more your pampered.
Like a nepo baby.
I will add, to stop assumptions. I buy all passes .
But I buy, to get the mythic, or more rewards.
I don’t buy to , jump forward ten levels, or do less work.
I find the model of paying to do nothing, disgusting and disrespectful to my guild mates. That can’t afford to buy passes. Just my view.