Perhaps I've gotten a little selfish and greedy with arena but lately I see a bunch of new faces appear and that bothers me.
It's like you can't do anything to surpass these people as with a meta so diverse everyone can beat you. You run a Rey team, they smash you using Palpatine or Nightsisters. You run Palpatine or Nightsisters, they smash you with cheap Titans or Rex. You run Titans or Rex, they smash you with everything available.
It's a little bit disappointing cause it doesn't take much effort to get any of those teams either. By now everyone has at least 2 of the four dominant teams in arena (Rey, Palpatine, Nightsisters , Titans) so it's impossible to escape.
I used to do 2-4 battles a day and I would comfortably maintain my rank. Nowadays I gotta always do all 5 and some times I'm forced to even refresh to get back to where I was. My mods are pretty decent too however with the current meta and their counters a team with lesser speed can defeat teams with higher speed.
I think this creates a messy situation that increases playing time significantly as well as making arena very volatile and stressful. Perhaps it's time to consider different payout methods as well as better defensive strategies that can allow you to actually win on defense.
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At least, those are my feelings on it, and my experience with the game. I'd much rather have this rather than the almost imperious reign of CLS when he first came out.
sums it all up nicely.
Aoe stuns from palpatine every other turn, sions aoe buff-wipe, insane TM Gain, Nihilus smashing your cooldowns, Thrawn fracturing out a toon completely.
So many things that can cause a device to be thrown against the wall.
It is good that because of the diversity I can usually choose to attack a different squad.
Arena is good currently IMO.
Er, no.
It is just not normal that speed was negated in such a way. I spent a considerable and regular amount of cantina energy to get to where I am now (+110-131 speed in arena), yet a mirror team with 20-30 speed less on each toon can easily wins on offense. I made this sacrifice at the expense of farming more toons with my cantina energy and I am often at a lower GP level than some FTP players despite spending regularly.
Why is arena messed up? Because enemy Sion gets to held by hatred faster when being passive because the enemy team is much slower, because you have this silly coin toss that determines who goes next, because somehow DN can annihilate on his second move (yes yes, his cooldown decreases when stunned), because of the RNG around Palp's stuns, because EP sucks against RJT on defense, etc.
So many reasons to say that the arena is anything but healthy at the moment.
There are days when the gods are simply against you and you will lose 3-4 fight in a row against a team you easily win against. You try everything (e.g. your vader uses his basic on enemy vader to inflict ability block and get the speed order respected but no, enemy sion and DN have their cooldowns reducing in the background and their next move completely turn the tide against you).
This is not a healthy meta, it's snipers central, and this is just a race to the bottom with weaker teams able to compete.
The mechanics of arena are broken, the payout concept is discriminatory against people living in area with a high concentration of players. Arena should be much closer to TW where you would face a number of teams and the more arena prepared rosters should prevail.
I see people running 1 year old teams because they are alone at their payout and they can climb quietly with an outdated team and they don't have to worry about chasing the meta. I need to stay on top of my arena with the strongest team at all time otherwise I get quickly de-ranked by fellow shard players climbing at the same time.
I can't wait for traya to make her appearce on the scene, that will shake up things a little atleast temporary. I've been saying this since like forever, balance is not something we should want
Just wait until late game
I don't necessarily think gear level and level cap is the answer, it won't be long before everyone catches up
What the OP described is one of the reasons it pays off to "collude"' with your shardmates though. Winning on offence was never the issue, being sniped during pay-out was and still is. Colluding with your shardmates decreases the chances of being sniped, the more players being able to snipe you, the more beneficial colluding becomes.
That
Don't you see the paradox here though? You say "defend" your possition however no team can stand on defense any longer. The only way to defend is by attacking and since attacks are limited to 5 without spending crystals to refreshe, but you can be attacked unlimited amount of times, it creates a problematic situation because if you get hit 6 times but can only attack 5 times now you are forced to buy a refresh just to get back to where you were before.
When it comes to being hit more than 5 times, you can't really do anything about that, even the scariest nightmare team is a piece of cake for my Rex team so it's basically all luck at this point.
Why should people in Paris and Chicago have more built in competition than someone in Hawaii or Portugal? Players in “off” timezones get to accumulate more crystals faster, which gets them into better guild, which gets them better guild rewards.
I have 5 people with the same payout in fleet who we cooperate with and at least 2 more not in chat. Others in my chat who live in Europe have 7-8 people and then there a a couple guys who are the only ones in their payout so they always get 1st...
Perhaps it is time for you to be gratefull you had an easy time for so long, that you got used to it and regard it as the norm rather than having a competitive arena.
Well that's just not true, you don't know how much effort I've put in my squads so far so your statement has no backing