Okay, so I can battle other players, and get either gold or arena tickets.
But from what I can see, the items you buy with arena tickets only help you with Pet Races or PvP. So, you can't really use PvP to hone your skills and get better equipment against the monsters in the regular game.
Well, this is sort of a tricky subject. The main reason PvP is used is just for fun. Yeah, there are some hardcore duelists out there. They live to vaporize those who once saved them when they were questing. Technically, in addition to this, PvP hones skills far better then PvE. Why? Because Wizards are far more intelligent then the mindless NPC enemies scattered throughout the Spiral. While players have limitless variables and parameters to duel against, the enemies have but a few.
Okay, so I can battle other players, and get either gold or arena tickets.
But from what I can see, the items you buy with arena tickets only help you with Pet Races or PvP. So, you can't really use PvP to hone your skills and get better equipment against the monsters in the regular game.
Or am I wrong?
Diego sells some pretty sweet gear for 5-45, there is conviction, gained by ranking up once, which helps like in waterworks and mirror lake.... (chain stunning), cloak's symbol is cool, a fair amount of people like the looks of the commander robe.... Enough things you can get through pvp, and onto something else. If you get good in pvp, which is player vs player (player vs troll occasionally), anyway, you can get a lot sharper, if you can win against a working mind, adapting to your moves, then you will probably more easily beat mobs, which have set spells, you halfway know what to expect, etc.
This may be, but sometimes the fact that the enemies don't do much thinking that becomes your downfall.
Such as you think, this guy won't attack. He's only got one pip. So, you assume you can safely avoid healing yourself, which would use up two pips and instead attack. Well, turns out his resistance is very high, the 3 pip spell you did amounted to almost nothing. He then does a one pip spell back, and you're gone.