IMHO:

Stage 1-4 are all easy especially with high DPS you can melt them down pretty fast and there's no real "mech" just some sort only environmental damage.

Stage 5 CAN be tricky if you don't focus and if your DPS is high. You need control more than raw power there (until last island). Dunno why but many DPS are horrible at control and just nuke wathever they see even if they know they shouldn't.

Stage 6 CAN be tricky with low DPS, it will force you to repeat the whole mechanich 1-2 times while it gets easy with good DPS

Stage 7 is IMHO the harder once you know the place. Even if you do memorize everything there are many many random things there. Probably the "Flawless Conqueror Wannabes Slayer".

Stage 8 shoud have been placed before 5 IMHO since it's easier than 5-6-7

Last boss is a different story;

VERY hard but where's this difficulty coming from?
High damage on you? nope
Boss to strong to kill? nope
Mechanichs? Yes, yes and, then again, yes.

The only "Hard hitting" things in there are Crematorial Guards, Necrotic Wave and Soul Churn.

1- The CG, you just need to know HOW to approach these guys. Once you do they are hardly a threat.
2- Necrotic Wave can/must be interrupted
3-Soul churn is just a mechanich env. damage and it IS resettable just by jumping down again.

This to say that last boss gets more and more easier once you beat him once.

(My first clear stuck me in last boss for 3 days, my second clear was a weekly score of 200k+).

TL;DR

Stage 7 imho cause others gets better with training. Stage 7 will gets better as well but not just THAT much. Volatile Poison sucks.

For me its stage seven. The poison rng usually gets me at least once, and when its not the rng its those damn archers! Last time through I learned the hard way that archers can dish out the poison dot too, ugghh. I also sometimes struggle on stage six because there's a lot to keep track of and I often mess up the mechanics. Having the obelisks primed before the boss phase helps a ton.

The final stage and boss have come to be among the easier stages for me. My first attempt I spent a lot of time failing there and learned it very well. Its all about respecting the mechanics. I highly recommend @Joy_Division's guide on these forums if you are struggling.

Stage 5 is tough until you learn the mechanics, then it gets easy. Stage 7 is the worst IMO (especially for werewolves), because of RNG - in my case it was one of those damned poison funguses spawning under the dome during last boss fight. Stage 8 can be tough for vampires, the last stage is hard, but not that bad - again, after you learn the mechanics.

For first timers the last boss fight is definitely without a doubt the hardest fight in the Arena. It is however very predictable which makes it a piece of cake when you have more powerful gear and know exactly what to expect. (I definitely don't mean to sound mean, I struggled for days and days on the last boss and I couldn't figure out how to beat it for the longest time).

After that it really is the poison spore level, at least for me, when I was gong for Flawless conqueror, definitely the poison spores got me most times. But even that level can become quite straight forward when you know how to deal with the spores.

Funnily enough, I find the second level to be most annoying now with the spinning helicopter blades xD

Stage 5 made me give up for months

Stage 7 still keeps me from getting Flawless Conqueror

Stage 9 took a week of frustration to figure out, now its the only round I enjoy

Stage 5. Made me quit the game in frustration for some long months.

Is stage 5 the melting ice ? Then yes, made me leave the arena

Stage 5 took me the longest time to do it easily. I'd say it's the hardest. You've got lots of damage incoming, you need to focus your dps and if you make a mistake when playing the mechanic you are dead, while on other stages you ususally can ignore the mechanic or just lose time.

Stage 7 is hard because of rng, but with time you can learn to play around it. I was having a hard time in stage 7 because I wanted to kill those venomcallers as fast as possible. When I dediced to keep my cool and let the poison flowers bloom while I was just doing my thing and killing the venomcaller when I had time, it got easy.

Both Stage 5 and Stage 7 are a lot easier on magicka dps, while in the other stages it doesn't really matter if you are magicka or stamina.

As others have said, after you are more experienced, Stages 5 and 7 are the most troublesome.

If I pass 7 without deaths, I know that is probably a Flawless run.

But Stage 5 still gets me around 50% of my runs... Hate that place.

Stage seven, without any doubt for me. The others have their difficulties, sure, but for that stage it's just completely RNG based. You can be completely aware of what's happening, never miss a dodge roll, always take the venomcallers down when they spawn, and you can still die without being able to do anything about it if RNG decides to hate you. It's soooo frustrating. Made me so close to giving up

Last boss on stage nine was hard for me too, but that's because I didn't go in there with particularly high dps. Sure, if you can burn everything down, you can get rid of the crematorial guards very easily and get Voriak's health down in the meantime, I know some people can burn down the crystals in just one go too, but if you don't have high dps it's just... wipe and wipe again before you get lucky that one time and manage to kill him.

stage 5

if you can clear 5 you can clear the whole thing

Stage 5 generally. Stage 7 is next mainly due to RNGesus.

DocFrost72 wrote: »

BNOC wrote: »

Unless they've made changes to it over the last 3 years, everyone in this thread knows you can just stand at the side of a pool on R7, and never being touched by a plant, yeah?

If any adds make it to you, they become invulnerable. Useful for not accidentally killing menders during the scream, but kiting them in is more effort.

If you stand on the edge of the pool, they don't ever get into the radius of the invulnerability.

To be fair, I'm talking specifically about the boss round as I assumed that's what gave people the most trouble given the waves take like 30s each and you're constantly moving/setting up making it easy to avoid plants.

But yeah, kiting all the wave adds there would be effort, I don't actually think you'd be able to lure them all anyway as a lot are ranged.