I'm just over five months in, will be getting scyl in a few more weeks finally!I'm just over five months in, will be getting scyl in a few more weeks finally!

This is my first account/time playing raid. I peaked at gold 2 a month ago when I had been playing just over 4 months(this was right when a lot of the arena uproar was starting but I was progressing fast after setting up a good team), for the last month I was sitting around 2100-just points shy of 2300 not being able to get back to gold 2. Currently I'm in the low end of gold 1 2000-2100 range, some mornings I wake up back into silver 4 having dropped as low as 1920. With the recent state of arena there has been a large number of higher teams sliding down sometimes on purpose to farm easier and it has helped me drop in rank a little bit more each week.

I don't remember having a problem getting into silver early on, I did not get stuck on missions until getting a great hall bonus to rank five. I believe this was toward the end of the bot days because I was just running "my best champs" at the time and looking back my comp and gear was terrible and I do not think I would have gotten passed bronze 2 in the current game.

Since then I have put a lot of time and thought into my arena set up and gear. At this point I have a decent comp and different champions/affinities to sub into my comp depending on what I'm trying to fight in the arena.

I had a baby account I was working on to go back through early game and check the state of arena but put it on the back burner due to time constraints of doing yoshi then right after the brogni fusions. I'm about 90% sure I could have gone to at least silver one had I gotten my warmaiden to six star along with hk+spirit host to level 50+ascended, can't remember my speeds but probably around 230 on hk @ 31 days.

I hope this helps 

I got into gold4 shortly after getting HK and before the change and was able to stay there for the most part.  used Apoth into HK into Warmaiden into Elhain. After the change, this team didn't even come close to competing in gold even though it's the standard meta offered up by everyone to new people who are struggling in the arena.

I'm sitting in high gold 1/low gold 2 now with 4 epics often facing 4 lego's, and find it massively easier than low gold 1/silver 4, so for those who haven't hit gold yet, good luck!

Around day 150 right now.

Thanks  for  this  info,  it  seems  you  made  it  out  of  Bronze  prior  to  the  changes  that  have  caused  everyone  new  so  much  grief.  I  give  up  on  Arena  and  am  now  focusing  on  clan  boss  team,  as  soon  as  I  find  an  alternate  game  to  amuse  myself  with  I'm  done  with  Raid. 

The  recent  forum  posts  from  newish  players  highlight  the  arena  issues  but  focus  on  "what  am  I  doing  wrong?"   the  problem  is  not  with  the  players  -  Arena  is  broken  which  means  the  progress  missions  are  undoable .

I've  beem  a  gamer  a  long  time,  in  all  games  I  have  played  when  the  developer  causes  grief  to  the  player  base  there  is  usually  some  form  of  compensation  -  how  will  plarium  recompense  all  of  us  who  have  wasted  time  and  money  because  of  the  problem  they  themselves  have  caused?

6 months in, peaked at G2 and didnt initially have problems- total spend is 12.99 ...one mini max and one gem pack

Have had mixed luck on shards, great pulls for CB (draco and fb and zavia) but no good speed leads etc for arena which is where i struggle. No unkillable comp but can do UNM top chest.

Expended a lot of effort trying to optimise arena team (and got above 280 speed on speed lead), but staying in gold a massive effort although i stayed for a month or so. Everyone i face seems to have gorg/lyssandra/arbiter/deacon etc...and my best turn meters are apoth and HK

Eight days ago went inactive, since going inactive have dropped multiple tiers and still in freefall.

But yes i reached silver no problems.

Should add - didnt really stop playing due to arena if honest, i could have prob stayed up if i spent loads of time picking fights etc

I reverted to just logging on and chatting personally because it was a full time job to do even the basics (dailies)

The game seems geared towards people with either no life, or those willing to throw their life savings at it. If you have a job and life and dont want to waste your salary on it- then it seems this is not the game to get into as just dailies take ages and there is no auto complete on any of the grindy content and its set to get even more grindy 

I have an alt account that was up in gold 4 before the changes, then it dropped down to bronze 1 and this week I began working it back up. Just made it back to silver 1 today. For clarity I have spent about $200 on this account and it is 4 months old. I've had some lucky pulls, but the biggest thing I've noticed with arena is most people's team while they look big and strong they aren't speed tuned. If you can properly tune a team and use double boosters with a def down and an aoe nuker you can make it to silver and then work up to gold. It's definitely a struggle but with some work it is definitely doable.