I banned Taras, used Fenax to counter marichka, and won that one

I guess the Terminator Bots are still around, and I've just been fortunate enough not to see them this LA Season.  

That is what I call user error 😆 

Yeah, that fair. I also lost on Speed and Horsey got killed through his stoneskin before he got a turn

Q: Whaddaya call a LIve Gold IV team where every champ has between 340 to 400 speed?

A: Go2nd

I only recognize it from vast experience myself.   The less I over think my counter picking and who to ban the better I 

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This was my bot yesterday.  Your bot rng is terrible 😆 

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Just fought (and won) a bot who has Embrys

Just sayin' it'd be nice if ONCE I faced a bot with fewer Blessing *s than my best champs.

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A clustermate of mine

66 seasonal score vs 20k

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Top notch matchmaking there

As I sit here, doing my 7th live arena fight of the day where my opponent has more 6* blessing on thier team than I have in my entire account,

I reflect on a lesson I've learned this past week from focusing on FW hard:

Missing out on getting the energy from completeing daily advanced quests really doesn't bother me.

I'm still doing live arena, and I still hate it. It is still, unequivocally, the worst part of my day. I'm doing it for the great hall bonuses. and frankly, that's wearing thin.

Ash posted a video yesterday with the guy who was in 4th place in seasons, and he mentioned that even the krakens, himself included, who do 100+ battles a day, with 70%+ win rates, don't LIKE live arena. They spend 1000+ gems a day on refills, they have *teams* of clanmates running the account in shifts (how the hell is that not a violation of the ToS?) to grind live arena for the full 12 hours it's open, and even they don't enjoy it.

In S1 of LA, repeat fights virtually disappeared.  Presumably due to the number of people playing.

In S2, I saw no repeats for the first two weeks, then they started showing up again and got more frequent in the final week. 2 days ago, I had the same opponent four times out of ten.  Almost felt bad beating him every time. 

So then, why bother?

It's not like the LA GH is that impactful after you hit a certain level.  My Hydra is 100% done, Sintranos is at L6 across the board and I did the same for FW when Hard opened.  I am still sitting on 15K crests.

I must be a half percent outlier. LA is not my favorite part of the game, but I certainly don't hate it. I don't particularly like the amount of time it takes, but I enjoy the actual live fight aspect.  

The fights that I like the most are ones that require a bit of back and forth versus the ones that are over in 3 moves one way or the other.  

primals, I like beating bad whales, other resources, etc.

some reflections on live arena after two seasons:

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S1 I started with about 3 weeks left, S2 2 weeks (which got a bit annoying at the end, but also I think helped the winrate by several % due to weaker matches)

some overall takes as a player (not mod, pls don't eat me) and this is before the Nell nonsense that's going on:

1) Armanz is still getting first picked by folks way, way too often. Wand, Cage, resistance, etc. is just hurting him a lot. If you have Horse and any reasonable way to get around Armanz or other good options, definitely do that. 

2) Fabian > Armanz most of the time and subsequently is much more important to ban in this meta

Fabian is straight up amazing right now.

3) Sheep is nowhere near as good as it used to be (looking at Armanz A3) due to wand, though that'll probably change with Nell rampaging because you won't always be able to ban her (also she's going to be obnoxious in siege now)

4) generally speaking even if your roster is limited, unless you're going multiple bombers pls stop first picking arbiter 

5) bombers are fantastic last picks to try and keep your other critical champs, especially rat since that's such a great affinity situation

6) run more of your champs in supersonic

As for matchmaking I think it's mostly fine except for start of season. I did have a few matchups where I'm like ok, they have 1k+ more points than me and are running +2 or higher mythics + other oppressive stuff, I'm cooked. 

I'm right on the edge of just saying F it and never doing live again

And if enough others feel the way I do, then eventually the devs will have to come up with yet another stick to force participation.

But wouldn't it be nice if they instead tried a bit of carrot and made some small incremental improvements to where players participated because they thought it was fun?

I would really LOVE to have this conversation directly with a dev, or at least watch someone like HH do it.

judging by wait times for matchups it seems participation drop has absolutely been a thing.  

one more thing i wanted to add from a players perspective that doesn't have to do with matchmaking: 

with rng being so absolutely cranked to the moon right now it's positively insane that relic and even gemstone procs aren't visible. LA fights are fast becoming a harry potter battle and I should be able to see when that's occurring, as well as every other effect that goes off. 

It's still way higher than before season 1.  And the last few days slower because many finished already.

Nothing plarium does will make people like live arena.  They like 1) winning every battle 2) afk 100% / all multi battle/ auto 3) free rewards

I get it, the game is a time suck. I am not going to try and convince them they should like pvp. It's not going to happen.  Is the reward worth the effort is up to the individual.  

I never knew what was going on before, so little change for me :)

Trying to learn how to use embrys now. Spent an hour Sunday in 3v3 g4. He is fun, but i am lost using mythicals lol