I personally avoided the arena for a long time until I finally decided to give it a try, using the arena discussion topics to try and guide me. Now, having completed the arena many times with my mother's team and my own, I have gleaned a lot of information about what to do and definitely a lot about what not to do. This guide is to try and help people avoid big mistakes and help make the arena seem a little less daunting.

***Note: This guide is tailored to the Level 25 bracket.***
Choosing a Team
Within the arena, you cannot use elixirs or revival draughts so it is very important to choose a team with high base health. This makes fabled species like the griffi, ryori, lighira, and ny'vene very good choices for an arena team. High base stats are also highly recommended.

Outfitting a Team
Stats
Without items, arena battles are more about survival than dealing damage. Especially against certain arena enemies, you want high health and a quickness rating (found at the bottom of the statistics for a pet) above 35. Your lead pet should have everything stacked to health but there are multiple ways to assign the level ups and proficiencies of the other two in your team. You can also have them be either magical or physical as long as you have the gear for them. Generally, however, make sure that they at least have either level ups or proficiencies to health so that they can take damage and be able to sub in for your lead so the lead does not die. Personally, I put everything to health for all of my team. It makes for longer battles but also means my team can hold out against hard blows and are much harder to kill.

Elements
Earth: Generally not advisable for an arena pet as, while it will keep attention away from its teammates, an earth pet is much more likely to die and there are no revival draughts allowed in the arena
Water: The best choice for your lead, many enemies in the arena have high strength and you will need a strength-based pet to stand up against them. Water has the added benefit of being able to absorb some of the damage it receives.
Wind: the best choice for a physical damage pet. The bleeding can stack and that little extra damage can be the difference at the end between whether you die first or the enemy does.
Fire: Not advisable for an arena pet. Generally, you are only fighting one enemy so the fact that fire hits two enemies is not useful and you would be best served by one of the other magic-based elements.
Light: Light is a good choice for a magical damage pet as you have a chance of healing your entire team.
Shadow: Also a good choice for a magical damage pet. They can deal extra damage to the enemy and get a little healing in return.

Gear:
The higher rarity of gear you have, the easier the arena will go for you. Your gear is a huge factor in the damage you do, especially if the team is stacked towards health. Do not take less than epic gear but it would be best to wait until you can outfit the team in at least all legendary. Grind the Level 25 Haven missions and the Nightfall Bandit Dungeon to get your gear.

Ideally
Physical: Talon's relic, Talon's Armor, 2 bracelets of force
Magical: Sapphire's Relic of Sorrow, Ember's Armor of Flames, 2 bracelets of shadows

Otherwise
Lead: Assassin gear with a relic doing only physical damage.
Physical: Myrmidon gear with a relic doing only physical damage.
Magical: Evoker gear with a relic doing only magical damage, illusionist gear can be used
**Crusader gear is usable but not advised because you need the agility/dexterity for the quickness rating
**Disciple gear is not advised at all as it does not enhance any needed stat
**Warden gear can be used if your pet does not have a high enough quickness rating.

This is my team for comparison
http://www.sylestia.com/view/pets/?petid=569351 My primary lead
http://www.sylestia.com/view/pets/?petid=612399 My physical damage pet, he is wind
http://www.sylestia.com/view/pets/?petid=626234 My magical damage pet, he is shadow



General Arena Tips
NO arena enemy is straight forward; each has their little tricks that make them difficult. While I will not go into detail on how to defeat every one of them, I will give general tips that, if followed, should help get you through these battles alive.

Pay attention!! First and foremost, keep an eye on what your enemy is doing to itself and to you. If you see ANY symbol that you do not recognize, check it out. A lot of the symbols will pertain to some sort of damage, such as the slash marks, which you cannot do anything about but not all of them. If it says that something might happen to either them or you, chances are, it will not be good. Note: Even if you have defeated an enemy before, carelessness could get you killed.

Block!! The block is easily your most useful tool within the arena. Those strange symbols that seem like they will be all things bad? Your best bet is to block. Note: Block uses 10 mana and is only effective if that mana is there so be very conservative with it. I would recommend not using a finishing blow until you have figured out if there is a pattern to the enemy's attacks and making sure you have at least 35 mana before you mend.

Mend!! Your mend is the only way you have to restore health so make sure to use it when you can, preferably when they reach around 70-75% health so that the pets do not get too low in health.

Rotate!! You can move party members around and should do this to keep any single pet from suffering too much damage. What is best to do is once a team member needs mending, mend them and move them out of the lead. This helps keep everyone in good shape with regards to health.

How to Rotate
I know rotating is not a skill most users know about so I am going to illustrate how to do it.

You rotate pets by going to the party manager which is the red arrow as illustrated here:

This will bring up a page with your three pets. In normal combat, you would go to use an item and use some sort of elixir. To rotate, however, simply click on the two pets that you want to have switch places. It will look like so:

From there, simply close the box and then go about your turn as normal. At the end of the turn, the pets will change places. Note: They do not change places until the end of the turn so make sure to do anything such as blocking that you need to that turn.



I hope this is useful to everyone and wish the best of luck in the arena!




**Note: This is just a compilation of things I have noticed and advice I have to give from my experiences in the arena. There are other ways to go about much of what I have outlined. This is simply how I did it. If anyone has something they wish to add, feel free to mention it.

Ive only recently started the arena and have been mauled by Fire Eyes over and over again and Ive tried a bunch of different set ups, but once I tried yours I beat him first try and same with stonewing. Your guide really helped. :)

Forgot to ping above ^^^

Congrats on killing them! I am very glad to hear the guide helped!

Yeah it got me up to Kimeira and Katalyst and those two are giving me a hard time. I got Kat down, but Kim was still at 90% when I died.

There are forum threads out there concerning specific arena enemies that you can use to get you past a particularly vexing enemy. I would recommend consulting one and then giving it another go. Good luck taking them down!

Thanks and will do!

Thanks for this guide!! I haven't done the arena yet and I'm looking forward to it more now :)