well, i don't see any money drain here... I have 500+ SoW from the sacrifice event.
I don't see the pay-to-win fact here either. I know some people throw everything in the sacrifice and keep as less as possible.
I have - in fact - see one of my troopers back then, when the sacrifice event for the crusader eddie was - he had a complete roster of maybe 10 characters - that was 2 eddies incl. the crusader and a few toons, judging by his talismans, he may have played a while, but was so "desprerate" to sacrifice nearly everything to get the crusader eddie. Well i did it sometimes, too - not that extreme maybe - i keep my 4-5 teams (PVP, PVE, 3 Dragons each and LOL).
Thanks to the Sacrifice event this time, i kept every good eddie and toon, looking forward to the gauntlet.

Tried on one device and was instant B without problems, so AA should be archievable here. (and if this "much" players keep playing, it's instant S, which grants enough charlotte frags for the start.)
I have enough Magus and warrior eddies. I can keep up with sentinels, too. I'm only short on Assasins/Gunner-Eddies and toons, but i guess the next gauntlet will hopefully either keep being warrior magus or have at least one of the 3 base-classes (W/S/M) in.

Well, changing talismans is OK for me, you can get from the gauntlet screen directly to my team.
I once started an excel sheet with the talismans as drop-down-menu to choose from, but i figured out it's easier to just write down a quick note which set you took from which character.