Most of it has been somewhat reasonable, but I can't say I particularly enjoyed opening 1750 green shards...

The summon rush target is going to make me sacrifice the Conellia I got in the champ training event.  

I would've skipped it too, but I don't trust them to not throw in some ridiculous target for the remaining events and then I'm stuck there with 3 unimpressive epics rather than... well, 1 unimpressive legendary.

I haven't gotten her yet. Gosh I hope I have more time when I get home, I'm close!!

There's still time!  Good luck!

Looks good

I agree, didn't notice much difference.  But would have been better if summon was at start of a training event to make better use of leveling up champs.  I think the epic in summon was moved back from 3000 to 3500, not horrible... but I thought there was an easy lego book at 3500 usually.  I only had 8 sacred, so just used the 7 (0 for 7 of course lol).  I wasn't going to fuse, but did so much of events during CvC that it was too easy...

I fed the champs I got from green shards into my fusion champs, hoping throughout it all that I'd be blessed with getting one of the rares needed for the fusion (alas no). Freed up my inventory for more summons, leveled up my food for the fusion, and got me enough points to get the last 2 milestones for the training event (and a bit more). But man, was it boring.

I'm not terribly concerned about the point requirements for the other events because those can be handled with some energy management (the arena is a bit iffy, but at the moment we have the "new segments" to help with that), but the champion chase and the summon rush, the latter in particular since I can save fragments and fusions for the former, are just painful as I can't afford to waste shards when there's no 2x event going on.

This fusion doesn't seem too bad, If I had time to do the champ training for the epic I would be done already with 9 days left in the fusion, and that is with spending zero. 

You seem to be focusing on the whale aspect.  What was actually needed for the fusion on that one was shifted from 1070 for previous fusions to 1750.  That is massive.  Almost across the board everything has been harder.  You might not notice it, but I assure you that some people do.  I just won my arena tournament so it doesn't matter to me that much that they bumped up the requirement.  But to anyone in silver or bronze?  That is beyond brutal.  I'm not a fan of BGE, but he has been documenting this with screenshots of past fusions if you wish to watch.

And right on schedule there is dragon rolling in with 2250.  It is like the developers are actively trying to drive away casual players instead of rewarding their increased engagement.  Just why?  This game will suffer if they continue to ignore the more casual players that every game needs.

Hasn't there always been one dungeon around 2000?  And dragon is the easiest, so at least they made that one the longest grind.

It looks like they raised the bar slightly across the board, nothing outrageous.

They are not trying to drive away casual players, they are trying to find a level of difficulty that drives revenue.  If its too easy, then sales go down.  If by casual you mean f2p.  Well then I agree, they don't want the fusion to be easily done by f2p.  They don't need more f2p, they want f2p to transition to low spender.  

This  fusion  has  been  slightly  more  difficult.  The  only  reason  I  have  failed  is  because  I  failed  to  notice  the  Classic  Arena  Takedown  lol.  Maybe  lucky  from  an  ancient  or  such?

I meant casual.

As for f2p or low spenders, most games like this cannot survive long-term if they make it too odious for f2p and low spenders to stick around.  Games like this thrive with a large player-base.  Think of Vegas.  Do they drive away everyone who isn't a whale?  Do they drive away those who don't gamble?  Hell no they don't.  Because if it is an attractive place to visit, the whales can come with family and friends when they might not have been able to come otherwise.  Vegas gets it.  Other games get it.  Plarium struggles with it.  But that is a separate issue.  Spending vs engagement aren't correlated.  

This fusion really was (or is) much harder than the previous ones. I didn't plan to get Mother Kybele, I don't see any spot for her in my teams. I allready have Rector Drath, I don't need a second force affinity healer from Knight Revenants. 

But in previous fusions I didn't invest heavily, I got 3 of the epics just by playing the game. This time I got only two, missed one Candle-Dwarf at the Dragon tournament because of the exaggerated breakpoint of 2250 points.

What has the breakpoint been historically?

I don't remember exactly, bu definetly lower. I allways got the rare champs from Dragon in the past, but this time, with better champs on my account and additional multi battles from clan quests it didn't work.

My breakpoint was higher than some of my lower level clannies. This was a surprise to me that it worked this way. -_-

I'm sad that I ended up missing out. I don't know what happened, but I only ended up getting two of the void summons for the fusion :/

You guys are underestimating Cybele. She's an enabler for an unkillable CB comp, which is very hard to come by.

I did the entire fusion, just because I could and in case I might need Cybele later. I'm not sure if the requirements were significantly higher across the board, but like I said earlier, moving the summon rush from 1050 I think it was for Hurndig to 1750 for the rare was just a spit in the face. 1050 was bad enough as it was, and the entire event is just a blatant attempt to get people to throw away their shards so that they have to replace them. The only margin for error in the entire event is if you manage to get one of the epics (12000 points for training or 3000-something hidden behind the rare in the summon rush). At least the fragment fusion last time allowed you to skip some fragments, personally I ended up with 120 and that still wasn't all of them.