CommentStreams:A0af8a88174bdecb7688d555f1d002bb

My problem isn't that the stage is "hard," it's that it's a random energy/gem sink.

If you go with the friendly allied strike strategy, you have a 1/7 chance that your card lands in the right place. In theory, it should be 50/50 who fires off their ability first, though in my (admittedly small) sample, it took me six "successful" rolls (where my allied strike card ended up in the right spot) before my ability triggered first.

Even with the most plausible powerful decks--a full set bonus, all cards level 50 and soulbind level 12, fairy high tier stones, and situationally appropriate artifacts--you need a very lucky roll of the dice to win. If you use Fairy for example, you can survive if Amazon has the Chilling Touch artifact and about 8000+ HP (doable at level 50 with tier 3 gems) and starts in that first slot. You can maybe win if Bone Walker tanks that slot (her ability is only -10% attack, so she needs over 9000 to survive, something only possible with very high tier gems.) So with that top tier deck, you still need to spam something with a 2/7 chance of success. Possibly less, since in the past players claimed that the game is biased in favor of deck orders where you lose. And of course that's assuming that your ability always triggers first, which might not be true.

You can maybe increase your chances even more if you stack your deck even more. Sticking a shield artifact on Fairy MIGHT work (not sure, it's a bit inconsistent whether that works on the different extra attack cards.) Sticking the damage reduction artifact on Dark Twins (again, with HP over 8000) gives you another win card. But at this point, you're sinking millions rearranging artifacts in a way that's way less than optimum for normal levels or boss fights, and at the end of the day you're only improving your odds to a coin toss at best.