Reduce upfront cost to make a toon usable

It isn't hard to gear a toon. Take General Kenobi, which required the gear for 2 toons to get to gear 11. A little planning, swgoh.gg tells you how much you need, and start farming the gear in advance. So with GK, I farmed 6 raids out. By the time he was unlocked, gear 11 from the get go. I did use crystals to buy the last fully crafted MK3 Carbanti but all that was used was arena payout crystals. $0 used for GK to gear 11.

Take Nihilus, I was already saving gear and since DT and Krennic weren't worth the cost to 7*, I already had a head start on whatever gear might be needed. Most of the toons in the same fraction require the same gear. All you have to do is look at them on swgoh.gg and see the gear list for other toons. And you know crap like droid callers are always needed.

You just have to be disciplined and not waste gear on toons that aren't worth it. That is usually where people fail and you hear crying about credit crunch or gear crunch.