It really dropped my score heavily. I guess i lost at least 50k score, so I have to put my dreams of top 50 on hold for a very long time.
I think you either have some terrible luck or you quit many games that you could have won to save time.
I use almost the same deck with a few slight differences (2 SoGs, just 6 aether towers but 3 light pendulums to fill the gap) and could easily raise my score by 10K in a few hours (which is of course luck dependant).
But anyways, I think 960 upgraded cards do speak for themselves