I'm in Gold 2 as nearly f2p player, spent not hundreds, only 3.49 € for one small package.
Arena is indeed, beside the Doom Tower bosses, the most difficult part of the game.
You really should avoid fighting teams with unnatural low teampower. The way the teampower (or power of a single hero) is calculated is just stupid. There is a thread about that, resistance counts a lot, while speed has only minor influence to teampower. So if you see a team that is in your tier (especially higher arena tiers), but has absurde low teampower, that's probably a nuker-team with enormous amount of speed. The chance that they will win the speedrace or interrupt is very high. On the other hand, teams like the one I fought here normally don't interrupt.
Of course avoiding fights if the opponent has lower teampower and looking for teams with higher power to win is absurd, it's the opposite of what Teampower should indicate. Plarium should really rework that. Speed as most important stat in Arena raises the teampower only by a few points.
I never used an arena calculator, I'm to lazy to do that. I know wich teams will interrupt mine and avoid that fights. Of course, sometimes I get surprised by a faster than expected 🏃 enemy. Have to take that as price for not using the calculator.
I have spent less than 20 and stayed in G2 for two weeks so yes it can be done, a lot of it is a lottery though
Looking at your team- i imagine deacon was a game changer for you, i simply cannot pull a good turn meter champ like that (and he has a sweet high damage aoe with def down too!). Knowing the game wont change the champs available to me. I wouldnt care about sliding into silver if the lower tiers were actually easier, but as i have high player power they wont be.
Anyway....OP i avoid unnaturally low power teams too...i find myself saying 'its a trap' in an admiral ackbar voice lol
I also dont fall for the single champs which just happen to have 75k power :)