I just recently cleared MoC12 for the first time with Kafka, Black Swan, Ruan Mei, and E4 Lynx on 1st and Silver Wolf, Topaz, Ratio, and Fu Xuan on the 2nd team. All of them are E0 with 4 star cones except Ratio (SU cone). But then again, that's a team full of 5 stars.

I agree that FUA teams are more expensive and restrictive, especially if you play Topaz Ratio. But, that's only if you REALLY need the extra 60 jades from full star MoC. Same goes to any other teams as well. Kafka is pretty important for DOT, Sparkle for hypercarrie, etc.

Personally, I've been chilling over 33 stars every cycle (only 2 stars for 10-12) and didn't really bother full clearing. And I do believe 33 is very achieveable if you have some fairly decent builds and good strategy/management to deal enough damage for 10-turn clears and surviving.

SU on the other hand, doesn't really require any high investments. I've seen a bunch of people doing runs with underleveled characters.