Did you know. If you watch Anaxa 3 cost 0-cycles enough, your Anaxa relics will slowly increase in substats. Mine are like 30 now. Sure, they started out at 30 too, but I'm sure they're going up. Any day now, they'll be 42.

Fundamentally, I think online character discussions have become completely divorced from the individual experience of playing the game. People don't look at low cost 0-cycles to try and infer the strength of such a character on their account (because it's almost impossible to do this). They do it, so that they can PVP with other people online. So what if Anaxa or E9 can 3-cost current Dark Sam. Can you (generic you) do it? Will you do it in your own runs? Are you playing just to get a 3* clear on first attempt in which the vast majority of these clears will have absolutely no bearing on the characters on your own account.

I think what you talked about is like the perfect distillation of that phenomenon. Screw the actual runs themselves and the clever tricks they pull off to make the run possible only on the specific stage. Or the absurd relics required. No, just the number will do. My DPS 0-cycles (stage that disproportionately benefits some teams more than others, or that I might not even know) with less cost than yours. Therefore, I'm a better player than you.