First and foremost, to E7 community members, I seriously do not understand how some of you are celebrating on the latest SG update. Applying "upgrade" to older units and not to newer units is not balance at all. When an old unit needed EE or in this case Awaken Potential to be equal to a new unit is exactly the opposite of BALANCE. Celebrating this is just normalising the power creep in this game, and acknowledging SG to do more power creep for future new units. Why? Because new unit will be more and more powerful so to at least be on par with an old unit with "EE" or Awaken Potential, or at least appealing for you to pull for them.

To SG, the concept of balance should be 2 units of same rank+rarity, such as 2 5 star mystic units, be more or less equal in terms of power level: i.e their total kits, their RNG probability, REGARDLESS if the unit is old or new. This should be the only way for balancing.

My suggestion: form a team, go back to your drawing board, start setting power level/kit score baseline for each unit category, let say a 5 star mystic and limited should have a power/kit score of 55 to 60, a 5 star covenant should have a power/kit score of 50 to 55, a 4 star mystic should have a power/kit score of 45-50, etc, etc, and discuss and give score to each kit, with the probability being taken into account, to get the power/kit score for each unit, and since you prefer buff, start buffing up units that are clearly not belong in their leagues. Of course this baseline has to be adhered for any upcoming new units. This way and only this way a future new player will still feel welcomed to this game.

EE and SC should NOT be considered as balancing. This should be an effort to lift up lower rank+rarity units to higher rank+rarity power level, with a little more effort but completely F2P, to appeal more to the F2P crowds. The target power level baseline also need to be adhered. In other words, this is a POWER UP that I believe everyone would welcome and benefit from.

Speaking of POWER UP, Awaken Potential OBVIOUSLY is a Power UP. You are adding more power and kits to existing unit. I don't understand who in your team suggested to cover it as a "Balancing" efforts which is so dumb to me. Instead of wasting your brain power to cover it as what it is not, you should learn the implication of bringing in this new Power Up mechanics and the potential players' concern, and addressing them beforehand to come out with a more complete and balance and well-thought approach. For instance, you could limit awaken potential to take effect only on one unit in a team composition, both in PVE and PVP, even when more than 1 unit are "potential awakened". In RTA specifically, you can set a new rule such that in 1-4th pick player can slot in their potential awaken unit but any unit picked in 5th slot should automatically "potential awakened", regardless if it is actually an awaken potential unit. If 5th pick is not banned, 5th unit should always be "potential awakened" in battle; else, player can choose 1 of their "potential awakened" unit to take effect. This should alleviate a lot of burden off F2P, while still keeping it interesting to all players. Of course any Power Up should come with efforts but F2P can be smart to awaken potential a unit, while whale can try their best to awaken potential all unit. And no one is should be gated by additional paywall or RNG wall on top of the already existing paywall/RNG, to participate in any contents, PVE or PVP.

Summary:

1. Applying Awaken Potential to only old unit is not balance and cannot be accepted.

2. Balancing should be performed through continuous balance patch, with clear groundwork: i.e. power level baseline/reference point, with clear and agile timeline.

3. EE and SC is should not be considered as balancing. EE should make a 5 star covenant as good as a 5 star mystic, or a 4 star covenant as good as 4 star mystic; SC should make a 3 star covenant as good as 5 star covenant, or a 3 star mystic as good as 5 star mystic.

4. If you insist to roll out with awaken potential, do not sell this as part of balancing effort. Instead focus more on players concern and how to incorporate this into the existing game as a new mechanics and make sure its fun. After all, this is why gamer play games, and why developer develop games.