I wasn't necessarily defending relic delta (although I've taken the stance of being in favor of it out of sheer petty contrarianism 😆). I was trying to show that we needn't despair. Yes, RD is gonna require higher relics across the board to be competitive. However, those higher relics are now much more accessible.
I think that a year from now, it's quite possible that we'll have settled into a new equilibrium where mid and endgame players just bring every new character to R7 minimum, simply because they will have the relic materials to spare, so there won't be any point in stopping at R5.