Can't say I can imagine we'll ever see speed caps or a universal unkillable buff but Stone Skin still remains one of the counters to speed, though there are certainly more interactions with Stone Skin now versus a year ago. (hello Incinerate)

Every team you're making now needs to know if it can go first reliably and if it can't what are you doing to combat the fact you won't go first. 

Currently my team Includes Falmond Moursword, Godseeker Iniri and lots of Bolster armor sets. Sometimes it's enough. I try VERY hard to get fast characters and have no idea how these people do it. My fastest character is Sanguinia at 255.

My average 115-speed arena team scoffs at those speed nukers :)

How do you counter the alpha strikes or the crowd control?

As much as I love Falmond he needs a very different team around him than this most likely. :)

Well you have lots of problems;

1. You are very "early game"

2. Bad pvp comp

3. Bad pvp gear

4. Your fastest champ is a terrible champ and slow

I could go on...

Until you progress:

1. Do all 10 live battles, pick whoever and hope u win 1

2. Use your tag tokens against weakest possible teams

3. Try and build one decent beginner speed team or go 2nd stoneskin team to practice in classic arena 

Stoneskin + Lightning Cage :)

Lightning Cage 4 Ever. 

i was a big fan of go second teams until armanz completely ruined that meta.  almost as bad as introducing stone skin to the game.

best strat today is to go first or die fast and move on with your life.

Yeah I feel like some forums need their version of Clippy to pop up and be like "I see you're upset with Arena Meta. Here's some helpful videos that might solve your issue"

Always.

TBF Id rather have my arena fights be over in 15 seconds and lose than 5 minutes and win.

Oh to be fair this doesn't work at all in live arena because yeah, Armanz completely shuts it down, so you have to ban him, and then that allows other, more dangerous picks through (eg Taras/etc).

I thought stoneskin was a good addition since it slowed the meta down, but Armanz just negated that and brought us right back to speed teams.

For Live Arena, I still have to say that Armanz shook up the Meta for the better, and it is still better.  

He provided a Meta-changing-and-defining Toon to anyone who wanted to fuse him, and helped us all move past the total dominance of the Taras/Marichka and Narses/Ankora teams.

@Sir Kyle 

I assume that you are still only running PVP teams composed of what you consider to be the Knights in Shining Armor?  If so, you are doomed to fail in PVP, and that is fine, but just recognize that it is by your own choice.  

I'm a bit confused how Armanz negates Stoneskin? Armanz can't steal the TM of champs in stoneskin and if you're only running one or two champs in Stoneskin with a slower team, that's on you for not building your team based on the current meta. Armanz also has to roll the 50/50 chance of even being able to remove stoneskin if he opens with his A3 instead, which isn't even factoring Resistance AND risks himself getting sheeped in the process. Not to mention Lightning Cage being the blessing you're using to counter his A2 and A3...

Sorry but I'm not clear on where chris and you are coming from on this one about specifically Armanz hurting Stoneskin in the meta. Champions who can AOE manipulate cooldowns are way more harmful to stoneskin AND are way more deadly to Lightning Cage setups.

Honestly I hate Narses/Ankora duo the most to this day, it's probably the most broken duo that still exists. Not being able to CC Narses AND even if you put all his skills on CD before his first turn, Ankora can negate that too... that duo was the first time I was glad Sheep existed lol

I could be mistaken, but I have a feeling that armanz a3 gets thru stoneskin. Seems like it works way too often.

Armanz has to roll the 50/50 to remove SS from the rest of the team, but not on the target of the A3, all he has to do is win the Acc/Res test and everyone running Armanz in Live has high Acc on their Armanz.  Furthermore, he cannot be sheeped by the target of the A3, only by one of the other team members.

Of course, Feral & Pinpoint have begun to shake that up a bit, but relics are really going to mess with Armanz.  I don't remember which one it is, but there is a relic that can reflect the sheep back to Armanz.  I had that happen to me when I was doing a Live Fight with a clanmate.  I think it might be Aspect of Siroth that does it.

Changed the nature of the entire fight.  I lost a fight that looked like a sure win based on speeds.  

I frequently ban Ankora so I don't have to deal with it. The Narses is always slow, and w/o Ankora around, he is much easier to deal with.