Unfortunately, no. Other than getting there via mysteries or ancients - if we're not getting them from doing all of the events and tournaments - no other way to obtain the rares. 

Saved up a little over 3 months worth of resources doing dailies. Shot my entire load and spent far more time than I should have trying to get the first 8 rares for the fusion. I've missed 3 at this point so I'm throwing in the towel on this and will never even attempt another event like that. It's WAY too much investment for a casual player in this game. I'm so put out with it, I may not play at all for a while. When a game becomes like work, I would just assume do actual work.

Any reason why this is the case??  Every other fusion / frag event had some room for error with extras.  Especially For the big increase in resources needed for this fusion.  Having to getting both rares on a summon event... my stock pile of shards didnt pull enough for both - so now i have no way to make that up.   If this is the new WAY, i may be looking for something else to play...

I don't really have an answer for that, unfortunately.

Comparatively between Oella and Pythion, this is a more difficult fusion relative to the value of the champ for sure.

So who here ended up doing the fusion? Anyone finish it? Did anyone start it and tag out somewhere?

I definitely had a mini freak out this morning when I counted 13 rares and only two events left. Quadruple counted everywhere (even has an "aha! It's probably in my mailbox" - followed shortly by an "aaawwwww"). Started justifying to myself pulling a few hundred blues to get the rare. Then remembered DD gives two of them, lol. So I'll finish tomorrow night likely.

Glad you didn't need to pull those lol