Buying tiers was the worst thing you could’ve done.
For every mode, they’ve cited “high participation”. What they mean is they’re checking sigils and gems spent. If people are spending gems in the shop, it’s a success. If people are spending all of the sigils they get, this is true. It doesn’t matter if players hate playing the mode so long as they participate fully.
If you think the mode stinks, and you don’t believe it’s worth your time, “not playing it at all” is the most effective way to communicate it. That said, it’s clear the current head loser has spent 129 sigils . If you want to argue “they won’t give a flip if I don’t participate” you’re probably right.
The mode is a wild success by the only metric they watch.
I’m going to break out what the current leaderboard means, and what you can expect from this event. In a different order.
You get 8 sigils today. I think the event is 24h, not sure. Let’s assume it is and update the math if it isn’t.
A good “feeling” rate for Valravens is “1 in 4 matches”. It’s random so we just have to deal with knowing our model is slightly off. 8 sigils should yield 2 Valravens for 4 bonus sigils. Those 4 bonus sigils yield 1 Valraven for 2 more bonus sigils. We don’t expect another valraven, so the “average” number of free sigils is 8 + 4 + 2 = 14.
With your 14 sigils, you’ll get:
- 28 class XP for completing the matches.
- 3,000 gold from rewards.
- 10 gems from rewards.
- 20 class XP from rewards.
The above is all a free player can expect. We have to spend money to get further. For the Orb of Chaos, you need to spend (and win) 40 sigils. Let’s consider what it takes to get there.
You need 26 more sigils. On the surface, buying up to Tier VI seems sufficient: that gives you 28 sigils for 1,350 gems. If you buy Tier V instead, you get 20 sigils. That should yield 5 Valravens for 10 more sigils. So you can instead spend 850 gems for Tier V, saving 500 gems. (If you buy Tier IV, you get 14 sigils. which only yields roughly 6 more sigils so you fall short.)
So, the orb of chaos requires you to spend 850 gems and win every match, or 1,350 with some wiggle room. Ouch.
What about the leader? They’ve got 129 wins so far, so they’ve spent at least that many sigils. What did they spend?
Well, valravens make this tough so we’re going to change how we calculate. If we think we get 2 free sigils per 4, then technically we spend 4 sigils to play 6 matches, or 0.6… sigils per match. So we can estimate the most this guy had is 86 sigils, and the rest were valravens.
He got the first 8 of those for free (remember we already accounted for Valravens.) He spent 1,850 gems to get the next 48 of them. That’s 56 of the 86, so 30 had to be bought.
Tier VII gives 20 sigils, so that’s 1,000 more gems for two repeats. It’s reasonable to believe “he hasn’t played all of the sigils” or “not all were wins” to account for the missing 10.
So the current leaderboard position requires a minimum investment of 2,850 gems and increasing. You get 700 back as part of the reward, and a major orb of power. The lower ranks are well within the range that the 1,850 gem investment might get you.
In short: lots of money’s been spent. The mode is a success.
Outside of the event, the spells appeared normal, so I assume this is an event-specific challenge? 
