Actually.. spending gets you very little progress unless you dump hundreds of dollars or more into refines. Arena is all about initiative... which is mostly just how old your server is. F2p on a 6 month old server can easily have more initiative than a 500$ per month spender on a 3 month old server.

The current arena system is pretty a giant middle finger to all players who faiiled to reach 6 paths before cross server, spender or not. Disable point loss for those that never reached 6 paths would make arena a much better place.