This game is a game you play over the long term. If you are playing without stable memberships it takes around 3-4 months to get enough fights on a gladiator to retire them. During that time you should be experimenting with skills/ strategies so that when you finally get a HOL slave you have enough knowledge of the game to allow them to perform well. Remember, to retire you only need 1000 fights, 50% or higher win rate, and to be a primus. Every fight above 1000 reduces the % win rate required to retire your gladiator.

Having high losses and deaths happens more because the glad in question is weak in some aspect: Either not enough skills are finished, their stats are too low, their strategy is poor, or their equipment is lacking synergy or is weak. Each gladiator will perform very differently depending on their race, class, and base stats so there is no universal go to strategy or item combination. There is generally an "optimal" skill build, equipment load out, and stat priority for each class but this is very subjective and dependent on who they are fighting. The gladiators you can get from retiring (Hall Of Legends glads) will have higher stats on average, but can still have poor performance if they have poor strategy, outdated equipment, or poor/ not maxed skills.

Gladiators can be high performing without being HOL glads. One of my best gladiators, Amarok, is not a HOL glad and doesn't have the greatest stats. The only thing going for him is the fact that his strategy is decent, he has good items, and had a high base size of 97.

How well your gladiators perform is more of a reflection on how well you know the game and can work with the strengths and weaknesses of your gladiator. Having greater stats from a HOL slave will allow you to get away with less optimal strategies, and makes the game more forgiving with mistakes early on, but such mistakes will be made apparent at the high levels of play regardless.

Many of these problems can also be alleviated by upgrading your stable itself, such as reducing and removing the death penalty by upgrading your undertaker. You will be able to purchase better equipment when you upgrade your barracks size, armorer, and healer because you can make more money from having more glads, and lose less on repairs and healing. Getting better equipment improves the fighting ability of your gladiator, and will lead to less deaths and losses.

My recommendation: Do not be disheartened by this game early on. It has a heavy learning curve, a lot of hidden mechanics, and a slow build. Because of these things it has much more depth than is initially apparent, but is hard for new people to get into. If you need help there are several posted guides you can view on this forum and many of the active players respond either on this forum or through the mail system in the game itself.

I wish you luck in the arena,

Evildog