Some people are all “challenge events should be challenging,” to which I reply
There is “challenging” that is a potentially interesting problem to solve, and then there is “challenging” that is just grueling, tedious, or even outright infeasible for no small number of players, plus
Making events harder would make a lot more sense if the rewards were getting better — but rewards are not getting better
100% agree.
For me this event was the first type - interesting problem to solve. CoK is the second type.
On Point 1. I enjoyed the Challenge this event produced, the dynamic of timing special skills to looking at the best way to efficiently dispel the stone skin was a good one. It tried to tackle what has appeared to become the norm of events scoring which is carpet bomb and dose up heros on Mana pots.
On point 2, I completely agree. Challenge events should produce rewards that are fitting. If you complete legendary you should receive a legendary item either a 4* Ascension Mat, Tome of something or a 5* aether. I don’t mind if this is randomised between the 3 options but one of them should be guaranteed for the effort put in.
As a general point to the original post, I don’t think this event was to hard. I do think the step up from 9-10 is to big on all the different difficulties. But it was a challenge that required thought to get the right team from a roster, timing to defeat the stoneskin and the usual luck of the boards.
obviously some heroes made the event easier than others. An over healer and a mana controller were essential for me.
But at the end I completed legendary with 2 limit broken 4*s in my team.
I don’t mind “challenging”, but it kinda went into the direction WoW went long time ago. I mean the problem is the time. I don’t have a Proteus which means I’ll probably get some hits. Taking some hits means I need a lot of HP. A lot of HP means a healer that overheal, but overheal is giving lower HP than “normal” heal, which means I need to go with Gullinbursti and charge him at least 3 times. Which leads to a fact, that an attempt is in range of 10-15 minutes.
Well, I needed like 7-8 tries for epic, and ended up with giving gems once. Ok, nevermind but… this is leading to the “ninja tower problem”. The amount of time required to finish is… well… I guess I needed roughly 4-5 hours for gargs. And the reward was Jahangir and Ulmer from summons, total of like 10 world energy flasks and emblems. Ok that’s not useless but getting s1 3* over and over from pretty much anything is not fun (ok well, got cSonya from chamber, but I have her already…) I mean I understand they are trying to introduce anti stacking stuff etc. to not make it breeze, but it inevitably means the whole “preparation” to the last fight take ages, and then you can be done by one unlucky cascade. As someone other said, it’s like doing your taxes.
I feel you. It wasn’t hard for me but it was annoying… I have no good time playing it.
I’ve built teams around events so I had no problems. I’ve lost one legendary stage because the board was really really awful and I was talking to my mama while playing so no paying full attention.
Being blocked from using specials and items with the price of making enemies invulnerable to damage is just too unpleasant. I’m not sure if that was the main problem, but it wasn’t a fun event to play to.
Not sure if their HP were a lot high or Arco healing was a bit too strong, or even if Penolite and Goseck were nuking every hero down too often.
I don’t know exactly what made this event so boring, maybe the mix of it all. I could make a guide later of how I’ve beaten it to help other people… But I can assure that even I had no difficulty problems, I also disliked this event.
Being challenging is different than being just annoying.
This discussion makes me grateful I was more focused on basketball playoffs (Go Boston!) than the game this weekend. As it was I completed only Rare with my second Alt because I needed the Orb. 
I noticed that the Challenge Events got a LOT harder once they retired the old ones and introduced CoK and the Challlenge Festival. Once upon a time I could run Autoplay for all but the last one or two levels on my top two accounts just to get the Tier Completion Rewards. But now there’s so much more grinding involved that from a time management standpoint, there just aren’t enough hours to do that with all three accounts anymore.
I’m ok with the event being harder. I just wish 4* mats were offered for completion in that case. At least at Epic and Legendary.
Having said all of that, I’m learning to be ok with not completing EVERYTHING (Challenges, PoV tasks, Titans, Tournaments, etc) in the game now. A couple of years ago I tried to finish everything on multiple accounts. But forcing myself through levels just to complete them makes it more work than fun.
There’s always next time for the Gargoyles!
I took a screenshot of all the teams I used so next time this event comes around I know who to use.
Finding the right teams was extremely challenging (challenging 
like a challenge event) but refreshing.
Did it a few posts earlier.
for epic i found Ferrant to be the game changer. They kill themselves on his special. On my alt i really struggled, I don’t have any LB heroes as I have focussed on my 5*. Rest assured by next Gargoyles Ferrant will be finished and LB. I rebought for 75 gems and completed it just for the emblems
I don’t have a super strong roster but managed to finish all three difficulties with only one failure on L10, which I completed pretty easily with minor adjustment to my team.
Almost exclusively 2-1-1-1 teams, double red, except for rainbow teams a couple of times when there were no green bosses.
Off colour tiles to chew up stoneskin, and firing all specials when stoneskin bar is at 40% went a long way toward circumventing that feature.
Honestly I’m a long way from being a top player, so I don’t think it was too hard. Just my two cents and no disrespect intended to those with a different view. I would lime more challenges like this rather than the super grindy and frustrating ninja tower.
Iirc, there was this argument when stages got added to events. And maybe the Xmas event. Many did not complete them.
In those cases, the good folks at Peer Support would review a player’s roster and share strategies that others have used to overcome the last stage or so.
It is adjacent to the strong tank/defense debate where some want to go 7/6 on the toughest defenses and others want 6/6 to be rare and special.
My advice is to uninstall and use the time to grow a garden.
This time it was so difficult that I didn’t even finish playing
Don’t forget mist. She is awesome in this event as she case manager control with increase in damage from special skills
it was challanging, very hard to face with brute force, sinergy and stratagy made it pretty feasible
I thought it was harder than CoK…I couldn’t beat the last stage of Epic with my red team like most of the leaderboard did.
I went with Wollerton +19, cMelendor +19, Gullinbursti +20, Hansel +20, Li Xiu +20, all LB and got it on the first attempt with them. Was able to consistently charge Hansel and kill the purple gargoyle first, then did the same on the blue and red.
The last stage took time with only 2 offensive heroes, but I realized I wasnt going to be able to beat them just by stacking, smashing tiles and specials. The stoneskin definitely made me rethink my tactics, which is an aspect I enjoyed.
All said, I had members in my alliance that are level 80+ who didnt bother to finish Epic…not sure if they lack the 4* depth or if they werent changing their tactics. I think it may have been a bit tough overall.
Playing the game for a year, don’t have Wilbur, c colen, Lancelot etc and finished top 10000 rare, top 5000 epic and around 60k legend but I bet it could have been even tier higher in legend but I havent had enough time (read energy flasks)
I found this event a little tougher than what I was used to but not hard. That said I have a deep roster and a bunch of LB heroes at +20.
Now would a newer player not be able to complete without that. Maybe. And I think that’s okay. I appreciate SG making something hard for the deep roster players. We deserve a challenge too.
Minions worked well for me, wait one turn and stoneskin is gone.