Lego, and it's not particularly close for me.

I can grind for gear, glyphs and Great hall. Though my best six pieces might not be as great as our perfectly rolled six, it'll be comparable enough long term. 

There are some champions who are simply irreplaceable, especially in late game arena. No matter how much grinding I do I can never replicate what champs like Warlord, Yumeko and Nekhret do, just specifically looking at PvP.

But do you  not ever get your butt kicked  in arena  by a team of just epic's and  maybe even a rare in the mix ???? I certainly do and I can only surmise it is  because their gear is awesome (and  probably very good  Great Hall bonus)

That's kind of the thing, on a long enough timeline, or in a late game setting you're going to want the legendary here. There's enough of a catch up mechanism from gear grind/GH/glyphs/masteries/etc. that you're going to want the unique champion that does hilariously busted things. 

You could find counters to a certain champion/team comp with your scenario, but overall it's going to be much more advantageous to have a champion whose skill set can't really be replicated versus the best six pieces of gear in Raid's existence. 

I'll take a 6star soul of my choice ;)

You both aren't wrong in your arguments.  

Gear > Champs.... but diminishing returns on that one set of perfect gear. 

The bigger problem is if this happened 99% of people would pick the wrong champ or get perfect speed gear and waste it on making the fastest arbiter in the world...

I do like your point and  it certainly has value

But in rebuttal I will say that the thing about the gear is  you can move it from champion to champion as you get better champions

So I guess at the end  of the day it comes  down to what one would  believe to be the greater challenge

farming the perfect set of gear or shard  opening that lego you need  most. For  myself its been the gear....but I am sitting  on 160K energy so Trips will tell me to spend the energy and start farming gear :/

But I can see how a account could benefit more from their first Duchess or Krisk or any of the  other top 20 lego's if they did  not have  one

conclusion I guess  is  it  just depends  on ones account

For me, there's no question that it's gear. But I also have a very deep roster. Are there some champs that I could benefit from having? Sure. Is there any content where having those champs would let me succeed, while the lack thereof means I fail? No.

I would take a Nekhret over gear any day of the week. The ease that he would impart to Arena is just too great for me. He's such a crutch in Plat pushes it's just silly.

I can always farm Dragon and Fire Knight. Energy I get for free throughout the day, and I work to use everything I get. At this point I'm starting to even be happy with some of my builds.

But my chances of getting a void legendary? Very very small. I've pulled 5 all time, and that's trying to be smart about my void shard usage for a couple years now.

But you push plat. I don't bother :P that's content that I don't have the patience to actually entertain.

At this point with gear we also have the option of forging legitimate options (thinking Lethal, Untouchable, Perception and perhaps to a lesser extent Guardian), then we have Forge Pass if one is inclined to go that route and then Stone Skin every week. That's before we even get to dungeons.

It just feels like as we push up to the highest ends of content - especially Arena - we're going to run into situations where we just miss the irreplaceable things certain champions do, like perhaps a Yumeko. :D

Despite how good I know your gear to be, there's walls in the game where we're really going to want what certain meta champs bring. Gearing has its limits, whereas champs can break through those limits. 

If I get to choose my gear and substat rolls - I think having a 450 speed Arbiter would solve some problems too :P

Therein lies the rub I suppose. But if we know what champions we're looking for I think the answer is pretty much always champions at almost every portion of the game, save for people who are just completely done I guess.

If I could go back to the start of the game and have say, a Duchess or the best gear possible, I would snap the Duchess.

Not that many in the current arena meta. And less when every single champ is Stoneskin. I would value other builds over a 450 Arbiter anyhow, by a long way.. something in a 350 speed, 600 accuracy Yumeko or Warlord.

But even very very well built, those champs are STILL outpaced by a top tier Nekhret team, unfortunately. UDK and Ukko are not helping our speed leads out any either. So much RNG and variance popping up that the issue is just trying to delay enemy victories in Arena, rather than actually getting any defense wins.