Order 66 raid is trash

My dude, my takeaway from this is that you probably need to move to a different guild. If you're working on raid teams for O66, that alone will put you in good graces with recruiters over at the recrutment discord server. Guilds want to score in O66 to get those mk3 tokens. 

There are currently 36 characters shown in game with the O66 tag but we will get 2 more (GL Hondo and the last marquee requirement for him). 

Let's define what the "new" characters are for O66: BB2, JMMW marquees, Pirate marquees, Pirate Conquest units, GL Hondo, Jocasta Nu (I'm including JN even though she was unlocked way before the raid launched).

Currently, there are 36 characters under the O66 tag. We know 2 more are incoming: the last Pirate marquee and GL Hondo. Maz won't be unlocked until October, but she is visible in the game, similar case for Vane (marquee event begins next week). 

O66 characters: 38
New: 22/38
Old: 16/38

Naboo characters: 30
New: 8/30
Old: 22/30
(STAP was farmable 3 months before the raid, that's plenty of time to finish or nearly finish the farm by the time the raid released in July 2024 so I don't include him among the new characters for Naboo, those were QA and her boyfriends + Gungans)

Speeder Bike (launched in late Nov 2023)
Total characters: 30
New: 5/30
Old: 25/30
(Leia and her 4 marquee requirements were the new characters)

Krayt Dragon Hunt (launched May 2023)
Total characters: 39
New: 3/39
Old: 36/39
(Jabba marquees weren't new by the time the raid released, Boushh was last and she was farmable 6 months before KDH; I included Jabba because it can't be assumed that everyone will grind the latest GL right away and the Tusken marquees)

The number of total characters eligible for a raid since the current raid model launched 2 years ago has varied, but has remained between 30 and 40. Speeder Bike had seemingly the most flexibility in team composition but it's a clear standout and CG have not made any noises about revisiting that formula. 

There is a clear trend towards including more and more "new" characters among those eligible for the raid and it can be absolutely said that O66 is a huge leap in that department: it's the first raid where the majority of eligible characters are recent releases. 

Keeping in mind that the latest characters have consistently been key parts of the best scoring teams since KDH, I can see that a lot of early and mid-game players are justifiably frustrated going from Naboo to O66, where all of the best-performing teams require new characters. 

However, to say that CG are universally screwing the little guy is also unfair. 

1. The new marquee release model has made marquee characters the most accessible they have ever been
2. The recent change removing the rarity gate to gearing makes characters as low as 5* eligible for use in the raid
3. Era Battles hand out a bunch of additional shards of recent marquees (even if you can only access the first tier, that's 7 shards for every time the event runs)
4. BB2 had their bonus drop event which sprayed shards like a kid with a garden hose; it was a ridiculous acceleration of BB2 farms
5. A bunch of eligible O66 characters are recycled from the previous raid, so if you built them up for Naboo raid, you weren't going in with nothing
6. The fact that scoring high in the raid requires high relics and good modding is nothing new, this has been the case since KDH, everyone who's played the game for 2 years had that much time to get used to the current raid model
7. There are a number of accessible options for scoring in O66 using super super old characters (Hondo, Nest, Tarkin)

I think we can assume that from now on, the latest raid will heavily favor a large number of recently released characters, which in itself makes the raid more accessible to long-time players with large rosters who can afford to laser focus on farming the new stuff. 

To sum up: I understand where the frustration is coming from, but I also have little sympathy for people who just refuse to engage with the accessible options that have been laid out for them in detail by players who know what they're talking about.