Was accidentally sick yesterday so spent a good amount of time in the Crucible. I like it, but on Aspirant at least, up until around wave 70 or 80 its a bit of a snooze. Starts to get interesting around there, and above wave 100 can start getting pretty tough. I wasn't actually able to complete the 150 with any of my toons. I think the best I did was 130ish.
Challenger on the other hand seemed to be about where my guys should be at the moment. Good level of challenge pretty much from the get go. I got one toon to 50 and cashed out cause it was getting pretty tough. Also lost another at wave 7 or something when I was taking it a bit too easy. Something tells me to even get to Gladiator I'm gunna need a bunch of gear upgrades, and then likely have to switch up to a more meta build to complete it. Not sure if i like the idea of that but we'll see what happens.
The loot, as always, seems a little all over the place. I can say I got more Manticore eyes to drop playing yesterday, than I did in the couple of weeks before that (though, I wasn't really farming for them). I had one run where I died in the 90s on Aspirant that gave 3 rare crafting mats and a purple, but then when I cashed out at 50 on Challenger I didn't get shit. Not even a blue. RNG gunna RNG I suppose.
I did read on the forums though that the quality (as opposed to number) of chests that spawn at the end are directly influenced by your score. Gotta keep them multipliers up. Not sure how they're graded between the various ranks of Heroic, Supreme, Valorious etc. The higher rank ones all look pretty similar too