A couple weeks ago I posted an article about
how fast I was currently competing all the milestone rewards in the standard three-day cycle arenas (the two 4-7* arenas and the Summoner Trials). The bottom line is that on average I was taking about 34 rounds to do the basic arena, 44 rounds to do the featured, and about 116 rounds to do the summoner trials arenas, to hit all of the milestone rewards. I was estimating about 90 seconds per round, but more careful measurements showed I was averaging closer to 100 seconds. I can sustain 90 seconds per round often, but the occasional nastier defender pulls the average down quite a bit, and I had to record large number of rounds to see that.
Overall, that means I am taking, on average, about (34+44+116)*100 = 19400s ~= 5.4 hours total. That's every three days.
I was musing about how much faster I would get over time. After all, my roster keeps getting stronger. I continue to rank my 7r1s to R2, I keep ranking more 6* champs to R5. My speed slowly improves as I score more points. For fun I started calculating how much faster I would get, factoring in rank ups over time, and even stuff like opening new 7* ranks.
And then it hit me. The single biggest way I could save time grinding arena milestones was the one thing I wasn't doing.
I should be ascending my four star champs..
We all get tier 1 dust, and I've been typically ascending 5* champs as I those overflow my inventory just to use them up. It costs 100 dust to ascend a 5* champ, and I've ascended six already. That's 600 dust. I did also ascend a couple 4* champs, but just to see what ascension did to them. I should have been thinking about the arena.
There's a formula for calculating points in the arena that depends on a few things: synergy bonuses, your own PI, your arena opponent PI, and the rarity of the champs you use. It isn't as simply as if your PI is 50% higher you score 50% more points. But you do score more points. By my estimates, if I were to ascend all the 4* champs I currently use in the summoner trials arena, my average PI would increase by about 30% and my points per round should increase by about 24%. That's significant. I am currently averaging 114 rounds or so to hit all the Summoner trials milestones. If I was scoring 24% more points per round, that number would drop from 114 to about 92. That's
twenty two fewer rounds.
Since it currently takes me about 192 rounds total to clear all the milestones in all three arenas, this would reduce the total amount of time necessary to clear everything by about 11%. Or to put it another way, it would reduce the total time required from about five hours 23 minutes to about four hours 47 minutes.
I've already burned the equivalent of 12 4* champs worth of dust ascending 5* champs. I though the logical thing to do with that dust was ascend the strongest champs possible, which was the 5* champs. That stops now. I'm going to start devoting all my tier 1 dust to ascending 4* champs, and see if the predicted improvement actually arises. It'll be interesting to see how my arena speed improves over time. But given the relatively low opportunity cost here (what are you really getting from ascending 5* champs) *if* you are an arena grinder and *if* you grind the Summoner Trials arena, this seems to be the best possible return on investment for your tier 1 dust.
Is this return guaranteed to happen? No, its not, which is why I'm going to start testing it. There are many variables here, some of which are not easy to predict. In particular, when I ascend my 4* champs and increase their PI that won't guarantee that opponent PI will rise in proportion. I might be forced to turn off arena express to unlock the full potential of this, which would slow down my time per round and partially offset the time saved by doing fewer rounds. We'll have to see. Needless to say, its going to take a while to fully ascend enough 4* champs to make a measurable difference. So this will be a long term experiment.
