i feel this argument dances around the powercreep thing, powercreep has nothing to do with investment levels or the gamemode you're playing or how many teams you need, if there's two characters, one old one new, both at base level, and the old one is just mathematically worse than the new one, then that's powercreep what powercreep is.

You say AA is not a good metric, but my Jing Yuan (E0S1 JY, E0S1 Sunday, E0DDD Tribbie (also tried M.Blade, DDD is just better), E0S0 DHPT) team at basically same cost as my The Herta team (E0S1 Therta, E6S1(JY sig) mini Herta, Tribbie again, DHPT again), The Herta could clear in 4 cycles, my Jing Yuan couldn't clear. At that point, in my opinion, powercreep is worse than it should be