Probably, I am going to hate myself for this...
but I have been fighting about 15 levels above my weight class, about 50% of the time..
IE, my curent "level" is 15, I have 3 SSRs at 2 star (level 35), 2 SRs at 3 star (level 35), and a bunch of 2 star SRs and 5 star NRs and Ns
I regularly have to challenge level 30-40's with several 3+ star SSRs, and 6+ star others. to get my arena gift (the 3rd one is the only useful one, that drops when you have 7 wins) and I still win most of the time.

Although random luck plays a big part of it, I figure most of you people are NOT USING RUNES WELL
Another big part of it is the fact that Arena rankings are useless (the same reward for levels 200 to 2000, although that might change later- they have the brackets set up to split them(200-500, 500-1000, etc), but the same rewards

Anyway, for those of you who don't seem to be managing runes...
As a F2P player, 5 Star and up runes are almost useless to me. They require drops from battles to level, and not just the free hammers and gold you get from idling. If you find one with great stats, feel free to upgrade it- but with 50 girls with 4 runes each, plus spares for special opponents, you are going to want to use the ones that you can easily raise to level 9 or 12, without stressing when the success rates start dropping at level 5.
Also, pay attention to types. If your card keeps getting frozen, and doesn't have its own immunity- just slot in 2 anti-freeze runes. Although provacation (melee attacker loses 100 attack) doesn't work if the attack KILLS it, it is still a great rune to put on your revive cards (like Rusty). I actually gave her the matched set (provacation and pierce). Its not as great as I'ld hoped (she tends to kill the high attack cards before reducing them to 0 attack, and get stuck facing the same high health 0 attack card for several rounds). And just imagine what your high reflection cards might do to your opponents if they can't be hit by melee attacks the first round.



Speaking of "levels"- is there any real point in turning in achievements, other than the vanity emblem upgrades? I would actually be level 7, because I stopped turning in achievements, if it wasn't for the 180 pts you get every day after 3 arena wins.

For those who didn't notice- idling at level 3/4 gets you the level 11-20 training items, 5/6 for level 21-30, etc. So you can usually roughly guess how strong your opponents in PVP are by the level of cards you are playing against. The hammers follow the same progression, only all the old hammers still drop from the higher tiers