Stop separate the gear and the cash shop : it's the same thing gear is just a consequence of the cash shop
I haven't even seen ppl with 7s having good gear in this patch. No cs this patch kills youe gearing way more than before. I personally having 8/7 i stopped cuz it takes way too much time to gear and if you need to take a break you fall behind and it will take agesssssssss to get back on track. Farm for coins, astral farm for glyphs, farm for gold, now is even worse than lvl 51 patch when you used 8 amal for 4%

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2-3 years ago free playing was doable, now it's not, simply because there are enough very high cs players. If you don't have lvl 7 runes and pat 5 you can simply quit trying to play end-game because you'll never be able to complete all content. Completing DC for example was a pain with low runes/gear till this patch, and it's like 3 years old now lol.
Hopefully 70 patch will be better than this time waste monster patch.