you can still get good ninja as f2p farm shards from events save seal scrolls and do a bunch of ten draws. also what about the ranked shop and the group shop? On my old sever i was f2p earth main always top 5 with a team of regular sakura, sasuke and zabuza it was a beast team. I beat players with 3k more power than me in ranked battle arena sage battle and so on. It depends on ninja formation and strategy and if ur just auto in everything how u ever gonna do good? it's not easy as f2p but if u keep up with events and do all u can do in game u can be almsot as strong as the p2w players or stronger. unless they dump 800 dollars into the game.