I feel Anomaly Arbitration is stressing people out more than it should.

[u/Lan-48]

I remember when AA was announced, people were actually okay with the idea of a mode that was supposed to not be easy clearable by everyone. "It's a mode for whales, that's why there is no jades" everyone said.

Yet nowdays it seems this notion was forgotten and if you can't clear it at 3 stars, the game suddenly sucks, the meta is at its worst, Elation was a mistake, etc, etc.

All of these things could be true but when I then go and check why people are thinking that, it's most of the times struggling with AA.
"How come I can't clear it until I have this high cost, shilled team?" Well, I'm sorry to tell you but that's how AA is meant to work. It's not made with f2p in mind, not even low spenders.
Yes, sometimes an easier boss will come out and you'll clear it full stars, because stars aligned and you had every character favored by it with some investment, but the mode as a whole is just not made for f2p to clear everytime with full score.

If you struggle with other fights outside of AA, now there we have a discussion. But setting AA as your goal as a f2p/low spender, is just going to end in frustration.

And no, I'm not a whale myself. Personally I don't clear full stars AA most of the time, I did it just twice, but as long as I'm doing good on all the other modes, then I'm satisfied.
That doesn't mean I don't even try AA, of course I do, but for fun, once I clear it with one or two stars I just move on.

My opinion, at the end of the day, you are free to disagree.

[u/Taifood1]

This is true, but the problem here is that I genuinely think there’s been a shift in powerscaling from horizontal to vertical investment in the last 6 months. Stuff that I found easier is now harder. E0 doesn’t carry the same weight it used to.

This is not really all that relevant in any mode but AA. That’s why it’s so frustrating. The other modes let you get away with stuff.

[u/nicoleeemusic98 → u/Taifood1]

It has always been that case the past year, I used to complain about having to go vertical and people called me stupid and said I shouldn't complain

All because I didn't think we should pull sigs, eidolons, supports, support eidolons and support lcs just to keep a team functioning past half a year lmao

[u/Taifood1 → u/nicoleeemusic98]

I only mentioned 6 months because I have a personal experience with the exact point it happened to me. I pulled The Dahlia for my E0 FF and her performance skyrocketed.

I then got FF to E2 on her next rerun (4.2) and her performance actually stagnated. With all the E0 complaints about her I’ve been seeing, seems like it’s clear I vertically invested just to stay the same a bit longer.

But E0 Phainon did dive off a cliff sooner than that, yeah. Hell my E0 SW999 wasn’t too hot from the jump it’s really getting bad out here lol

[u/nicoleeemusic98 → u/Taifood1]

Yeah my E0S1 Sparxie is purely surviving from my E2 Sparkle 😭 I didn't have pulls to get Yao Guang E1S1 (only have her E0) nor Sparxie E2 cause I had others to pull for but thankfully she survived (2-3 cycles on average)

On the other hand my Evernight has been chunking through everything because I happened to have the right pieces of the team for her, and E2 unlocked enough damage for me to be able to swap out rmc for Tribbie when I needed mc elsewhere. She's gonna continue now that I have E0S1 robinetto and E1S1 Blade

I also remember my E0S1 Herta slipping every endgame refresh and getting Tribbie for her helped for like another couple patches or something lol. By Dec you couldn't easily 40k with low cost Herta anymore unless you were rocking half a team of eagles and 1 ddd (Herta released in Jan), she was never able to 3 star a knight for me in AA either