But then over time, as you get better and better, you realize you need some of those raw stat blobs to be successful, even when building around cool legendaries and at high levels, decks end up being a pretty healthy mix of a variety of different rarities.

Awesome, thank you so much Wes for that detailed answer! I've been playing CR on and off but somehow the way I engage with games on my phone doesn't fit CR; it's too committal to be a brain-off game like Vampire Survivors and Not Enough to be a brain-on game like TFT. For me, that is.