Okay so I promised in week 3's thread to share my thoughts on PVP. This is going to be a long post, be prepared.
History:
During the first two weeks I really had no time to play pvp, my SoW filled faster than I could burn them (errands, I was moving, etc.). During week 3 I saw what a greatd new feature this is, and was excited to try myself out. I put a team together, tried to learn from other people's defense what does worth letting into the AI's hands. Problem was my offense could mostly win when I was the one starting the battle. Like 75% of my attacks in which I came second was lost. I even started taking notes whether offense or defense starts the battle - 3 days of daily 50-60 attacks showed me that I'm starting with around 42% chance, which is ridiculous. Then I saw you guys have 90-95% win rate (not to mention Nicko with his godly 99%) and realized my team sucks BAD. I put together another offensive team, which proved to be way more powerful. Given that was already late Thursday, I let my rank be as high as other people would let me. But the team was strong and I had really good faith in it for week 4.
Goal and determination
Just as PVP was reset last Saturday, I jumped in immediately. I wanted to prove to myself that I can reach #1 and beat whoever I have to to be on top. Then the harsh realization came that with work, gym, hobbies, friends, household stuff and so on, even if I have the energy, motivation and financials to feed myself Ironite, I will never be able to beat Jofer. I simply don't have time. This also has an effect on my future PVP. So what happened now, what people could see, that someone who was NEVER near top 25 simply rushed straight to #5 this week. Might've been a surprise, I can imagine. Hats off to Silentknight (not with capital K), was an amazing race and I won by just an inch (5 points)
Defense
During the week I was attacked 424 times from which my def was broken in 336 cases. Considering I was continuously in top 10 throughout the week, taking into consideration that some points were lost at the beginning and some from players with way more points than I had, if I were to calculate with avg 19 points lost per defeat, I had to compensate for 6 384 points lost. That is immense, and many people are complaining about this. You are totally right, this is something so critical that NF must do something about.
People surely don't get discouraged anymore about Mummy, Prisoner, SSD, Troll defense combo, so I will have to do something about it. Also, I do lack a serious army of talismans with which I could improve my def rate, and I will be focusing on this more in the coming weeks. Good experience.
Attack
I feel I do have a decent offensive team, most of the battles I fight last 2-3 rounds (SSD's buff or AoS's Invincibility makes it longer but sometimes I can circumvent this). I also dropped revenge after day 3 as I would only be losing more points should my def be broken (12 points won, 20 lost) - something I wanted to avoid. My biggest disappointment is the roster itself. When seeing the same 30 people coming up on my list it makes me feel sorry for them for attacking non-stop. Why on earth does it work this way? Jofer and Nicko rarely popped up, but I think I attacked Gmac, Chaosego, Silentknight and many others at least 6-10 times when I was PVPing heavily. This is purely nonsense. And Gmac - I was just in a battle with you when Arena reset after my victory, then the fresh list brought you first immediately.
Personal feedback & reward
I did end up at 5th place. My 3 G/A souls gave nothing, and all 3 of my Shards went to other skills I wanted them to land on. Great. Spent 1500+ ironites for almost nothing. Also, from Thursday to Saturday I felt PVP becominng a mindless farming just as anything else in this game. Too much energy, too much time, too many ironites. Based on all of the above points and the end result, I won't be putting this much effort to PVP - will do the event of course, but I will not rush for skill shards. Not at least until I can pimp my defense.
TL;DR: PVP still needs lots of tweaks to be balanced and enjoyable so I won't make this rush again. And I'd share the eternal rewards for at least top 3, if NF congratulates and puts them on display.