credit crunch < gear bottleneck

@MarmotaMonax
The "bang for your buck" is based on availability, demand and costs. The only reason why crystals-for-credits is a bad deal is because you can earn credits "easy" ingame. And not because you need so many credits, that would only make it a relatively better deal. (this sounds very weird, but is actually true)
You are doing the right thing with buying gear instead of credits, but you dont realize why its a better deal. The fact that you need more credits than gear is irrelevant because your credit income is higher than your gear income.
You spend crystals to buy "time" and the relative value is determined by how long it would take you to get the item in question without spending crystals.
If you never spend crystals on anything you will have all characters 7* and lvl80 faster than you would have them all at max gear. When everything is fully maxed you end up with a surplus of credits.