I presume you are now in Gold 1 or higher?  If so, this will continue to happen every time you lose three in a row.  The game is searching for a Bot Team to give you an easy win, and there are no Bot Teams in Gold.

Bot Teams help drive everyone to Gold, but once in G1, you are on your own.  Unfortunately, Plarium has apparently not figured out how to turn that off, so you just have to wait it out, everytime.  

A minute is not a long time, but when you are just watching a pointless one minute timer, it feels longer than it is.

Level doesn't matter as much as character lineup. If your opponent has a wukong or an armanz it's a guaranteed loss because they're guaranteed bans that guarantee a perfect 4 man team comp for your opponent. Unbeatable, 100% unless you dump thousands of dollars into shards.

It really wouldn't surprise me at all if armanz and wukong games had a near 100% win rate when they're not banned. I'm going to guess we'll over 90%

I regularly choose to let the opponent keep the Armanz so I can ban their top damage dealer.  Then I resist the Armanz and take the win.

You can also try to out-speed the Armanz.   

All of the same tactics still work in arena.  

this is so annoying, generally wait for 20secs for match then go for a ciggy, every now and again it does find a fight which i assume really pisses off whoever has to sit and wait through timers!!

Just checked out of curiosity:

Sun Wukong has a win rate of around 40%

Armanz has about 40% in bronze, under 20% in gold

Edit: Something I've noticed is that my Armanz doesn't do well when the other guy has a +4 siphi, +4 yumeko, and +4 warlord, and they're all over 400 spd 😋

In fact, I especially enjoy beating the teams that select both Armanz & WuKong.  I bring UDK to counter WuKong, let them keep both of them, resist both of them, and win 75% of the time.   

I haven't read every post in this thread, but wanted to add my 2 cents, if its worth that. I agree that it is unfair a lot of times. There should be a handicap for players that are significantly higher level. It just makes sense. Those saying "why should you be penalized" Maybe you should have delved into arena earlier, someone who did shouldn't be penalized cuz you didn't. Its just undeniable that one who has played for years shouldn't be matched up against someone whos played 6 months without some sort of handicap. I can't rationalize how anyone argues that. But I wouldn't care if my real complaint didn't exist.

My real beaf is with the ban/turn meter thing. I haven't played for years and have a few characters capable of live arena, one of which has turn meter effects. So when someone bans that one, 99% of the time I don't have even the most remote chance. Sometimes people will have 2 or 3 with turn meter effects and ban my one. The match is so dependant on turn meter that its rediculous. If I see them ban that one now and know they have turn meter characters, I bow out, no point wasting my time. I would prefer not to, but again when turn meter has so much impact on matches, it doesn't make sense to not. I think the whole idea of banning one is redonculous anyway, but I'd have never complained about it without this whole turn meter thing. Why is the ban necessary at all? i'd much rather fight with the 5 anyway.

I don't understand why the "ban" thing exists at all. It only serves to make it less fair, not more fair.

Give up easily!?!  I faced off with a guy 2 levels below me and he wiped me out on the first hit of his ninja!

I don't mind a good fight but I either get matched with someone way op than me or they quit just before I win. 

I don't have an idea how to make it more fair. I just hate going up against someone who paid for the power instead of earning it. 

You all who tout "earning your strips" by grinding out the matches... I call your argument BS!!!  There are way more players who paid for their power just pounding on weaker players and you call thst "grinding your way through "?  Have at it!!  I can enjoy the game without live arena!(for now)

As you get up towards the top that team isn't going to win regularly without side support. They are going to resist him, be faster than him, block his abilities before his turn, etc. And if they can't they will just ban him and win another way. 

I went up against an amazing team the other day that used Kalvalax to drop the debuffs at the start of the game which then boosted his champion's turn meter and damage to insane levels and then he just blew up my team. 

When I have to fight a Armanz team I will often pair up Blizaar and WuKong so those two keep popping back up and one of the times I am going to get the jump on him and then it is over. 

I'm level 100 and I still hate live arena.  Now it's like i'm being forced to do it just to finish the advanced quests.  It sucks that i have to do the damned thing at all.  This game is really starting to piss me off with all of the additional shit.  i know they're doing it to get people into it, but it's just not working for me.  I hate this.

There is clearly matching by player power going on.

I didnt play live arena for a very long time and when i came to do the new mission i was in silver 1.

Almost every opponent was level 100, with 20 million ish player power (i won 4, lost 2). 

In my opinion if you are going to implement competitive pvp then it should be a simple ladder system, nothing else. Punishing people for grinding is counter-intuitive.

Definitely some additional factors in there.  I remember when I hit G4 my 2nd match there was against the #4 player in the world.  Fun times.

Everyone cries about the one match which is lopsided against them... stfu people...

I've challenged in multiple threads for someone to post their last 10 battles (still a very small sample) so we can see this "terrible" matchmaking. 

ZERO takers on that challenge. Why? Because the matchmaking is working well, you just have to play at higher frequency...

ill give you one, the person had a warboy, so deffinetely a kraken

i

I was simply commenting on there being more factors for the matchmaking going on than just position on ladder.  My personal opinion is recent W/R is the highest qualifier in matchmaking.

Warboy does tend to be the largest indicator of kraken activity.

fair enough.  whether their are hidden tiers or additional factors is moot imo.  The matchmaking is fair regardless.  live arena progress is dictated by one thing, frequency of play... I am simply ranting at the ranters, as the kinder, nicer trips (relative;y speaking of course) has heard enough :)

I see a fairly large spread of opponent strength as I get closer to G2. Stopped playing as much in Sept/october but the new quests people seem to hate have dragged me back in :)

Replacing the 3v3 faction/affinity with win 1 live is great!