I think they don't matter in the sense that their power is important. When are we ever going to cry that the devs have buffed Nutaku to the point where we need black Iris or we all lose? Almost the same with the silvers.
99% of the game can be cleared with a handful of Silvers and some Gold units, that doesn't mean we shouldn't complain about units being removed or not being added back despite being greenlit.
Gold is important, but veterans have plenty and new players have other things to focus on. Also on DMM, I never had any unit help me with gold, but I managed fairly well.
You can always use more Gold, if only to roll the 2k Shrine, having Gold-boosting units such as Noel allows newer players to focus less on farming that and focus more on other things. I don't know what you did on DMM but a newer player that runs Events will always be starving for Gold to AW his units, add in Skill AW and you've got a lot to work towards.
I advocate for the usefulness of every unit. I want players to actually try to farm Momiji. I'm the one who was happy just to get Daisy as my starter on DMM. I know Angels are good. I do wish I could get Chloe. But I don't think she is as make-or-break as others make her out to be. I mentioned Sophie because, again, I played an account that had a 10/10 Sophie for December through February on DMM and frequently had her downtime be a problem. She wrecked things, but she simply couldn't outright block as much as I needed her too.
I don't know what you were doing with Sophie, she blocks three and hits two for 30 seconds with a CT of 15, that should be plenty of time for most things unless you're trying to use her for something Angels simply aren't designed to do.
