I just hack & slash with two swords and get it over with whenever I need points.

what type of swords? what about armor?

personally, i enjoyed not needing to buy equipment as a pure-mage until level 40ish

past that, i was forced to start buying equipment just to get to the end of arenas

after the latest patch, i sometimes get killed in one round if the enemies get lucky with critical hits

currently using whatever staff i can find on the market that has the highest magic crit chance, and a set of gossamer fox/owl cloth armor