No offense but alot of these older players have a skewed perspective of the constraints we are working with as newer players.
If you can get Rhonda maxxed, she's not bad. But that's a lot of resources for someone new who needs to build up PvE oriented stuff too. Even still, she is magic affinity.
For me, it was about blessings. My team comp is the very easily farmable: (diabolist then high khatun, elhain my starter and farmer, warmaiden and spirit host). When elhain got her blessings, it cracked the UDKs. When warmaiden got hers, even easier. It went from losing 70% vs UDK to winning 90%.
The other thing was getting masteries. I spent my gems on elhain to get helmsmasher and it was totally worth it. Some say you should buy your starters masteries anyway, to get that jumpstart. Wish I listened to them earlier.