Is F2P dying a slow death?

F2P should be in good shape and history exemplifies that. I'm on a day 1 shard, and a F2P that couldn't unlock CLS first time around was able to use a Boba lead / mixed meta squad to climb to 1 each day and beat other CLS squads. CLS was about as gamebreaking a toon as has been introduced in GoH, yet he persisted. Did he drop further on D? Sure! But he was still competitive and could win on offense. Traya also presented this situation, and some F2P did have issues winning for a while, but eventually they unlocked Traya as well and were able to pretty quickly catch back up. From what I've observed over 3 years nearly, F2P can have some bumpier road at times, and they can maybe fall back a bit temporarily, but as a meta begins to season they end up on the same footing as whales. Unless the meta shift is really hard, F2P won't skip a beat. Like during 2017, when the meta mildly morphed from various iterations of Chaze / GK / Rex / CLS / Han / R2 / Wiggs where you'd maybe replace one toon or so at a time, but the team mostly remained unchanged, there was no dropoff at all. Just stick the course.

Speed is overrated a bit. It's important, but RPS matchups and smart play is MORE important.