I believe Daneos has made the game way less P2W than it was before. He made it so that you can no longer buy white stones, brown boxes, and dogi balls directly from the cash shop. You have to get lucky with the wagu machine to actually get something worth your money. Yeah you can get lucky sometimes, but you also get really unlucky other times ( from experience). He also made it possible to get these items as a free player.... Does cashing offer an advantage?... duh.... Can u gear up a character without donating a cent? For sure. Then again, as someone mentioned before, cashing is just you putting money into the game that you earned by working 8hrs a couple times a week instead of using this time to be farming or w/e. This is just my opinion on the topic.
P.S. If no1 donates because it is not worth it, the server shuts down. This doesn't benefit anyone. Many of us don't understand this, just saying.....