Finally got a team strong enough to go down the right hand side. Been grinding away all week, got to rank 216, fought 298 battles. Leaderboard top 10 all over 1000 battles, top 3 over 2000 … out of curiosity fought number 2 and their defenders were rubbish, all white troops featuring a midge swarm. Googled and found straight away youtube video promoting a bot and recommending a midge swarm for some unknown reason. Bots???
Defense teams are handled by Gems of War AI we can set the defense team but we don’t actively use it so all defense teams are technically bots. It could be possible to use a bot to fight in pvp to climb the leaderboard with your offense team but they do have some detection and do take action if caught. Some people set easy to beat defensive teams since it doesn’t matter that much for stats and makes it easier to trade revenge battles because when you are beaten by a player the next time you see them in pvp you get bonus glory for beating them. The team set for defense and the one they are using to actually climb the leaderboard are not connected.
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thanks for replying … the main reason I suspect these are bots are the 2000+ battles … I’ve been playing a lot and have yet to get to 300 … do human players really run 2000 plus pvp battles in a week? I suppose it is possible … I guess playing 7 days a week at an average of 1 minute per battle would be 4 - 5 hours a day. But there certainly are bots out there so I remain suspicious!
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Also the consistence, you see the same names topping the PvP ranks pretty much every week. So that is a giant red flag.
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I know it is suspicious and it is likely some players do use bots to climb but I also personally know a few of the names there often there are a few guild members that climb up there in the search for pet rescues during the week and they enjoy pvp. Some farm trophies some grind leaderboards on events. Many of us play 8+ hours a day and are very competitive. I certainly am not saying botting doesn’t happen by some but I also know for a fact these goals can be reached manually by actual players when it is their goal to do so especially.
Aside from botting there are other practices some players on the list might do like having more than one player using the same account to rack up ridiculous amounts of hours. I can only speak for myself and those people I know that come by it honestly. We as a guild aim for over 50 pet rescues a week at least so often getting into the top 100 is a side effect of that goal.
Interesting. I am not clear about the pet rescues … apart from the ones that pop up in -game from time to time … is this something to do with “gnome bait”? I will have to read up on this … thanks for your helpful posts 
In PvP modes like ranked, casual and arena there is a random chance of one of the enemy team being replaced by a pet gnome. When it is killed and the battle is won you get some pet food and it triggers a pet rescue for you and all members of your guild for the next hour. Pet gnome bait makes it so they cannot run away and makes them appear in the next pvp battle and is then consumed.
There are also some pet rescue days like wednesday and sometimes on saturday as well. If there is already a current pet rescue or it is within an hour of a pet rescue day starting, another pet rescue can’t be triggered so killing it will waste it. Sometimes we can hold the fight open until the current pet rescue timer expires then finish the battle and trigger the next pet rescue.
The best high end pvp strategy is to take the left hand, easy fight and clear 2-4 battles per minute. With max stats, there are a few teams that can do this very reliably.
There are probably people botting, but most are just playing matches much faster than you’re likely able to at your level, and for several hours every day. It’ll get faster for you as your stats increase and your collection fills out.
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I like using variations of the centazuul team atm in pvp3 but venoxia or queen bee teams in pvp 1 are blazing fast as well