tobi NEVER helped f2p against ptw, because it's not like the ptw can't use him as well. if the ptw is not sufficiently ptw to get exclusive/super rare ninjas to beat you w/o tobi, they are going to run him themselves and beat you with superior power. the top ptw in my server runs tobi when he is fire and 3 of the other top 10 ptws also runs tobi(all except one of the fire ones)
The only thing tobi ever did is make the elements unbalanced, making fire, and to some extend earth, f2p stronger than other f2ps (might apply to ptw too, but ptwness matters more there so i'm not sure)
On my server at least, fire and earth population is significantly above par, while lightning and water are below par to the same extend. The only reason wind population is roughly on par in the server is because of some GNW kankuro centered builds have been popularized in our server. GNW kankuro is also getting nerfed from what I heard, so not sure how things will be afterwards.