Quote Originally Posted by Unregistered View Post
New player here.. is Thunder really not usable unless I whale?
Define whaling? If whaling is "any money spent ever" then you probably shouldn't be looking at Thunder.

You can build a decent Thunder team with Miracle Tickets, which come to a yearly cost of 150 bucks or so. That's not a bad cost for a hobby if you ask me (12.5 bucks per month), but your thoughts may vary.

Without Miracle Tickets, Thunder is... seriously lacking. There's basically no good Rs and very, very few good SRs. In addition to what Cobble mentioned, Astraea is good as she allows Dartagnan to land her -50% Def debuff reliably. There's also Thunder Artemis and Noel, but both were limited SRs and that ship has sailed.
Quote Originally Posted by Unregistered View Post
Also I'm kinda lost, is there a best node for grinding rank or should I be doing something else?
Rank doesn't get you much. It comes as you play. You should be focusing on events, which is currently the Thunder Raid. Raid events are good for new players as you can call for help (AND YOU WILL NEED IT).

But perhaps most importantly, as a new player, did you reroll? You really should reroll into a 100% Eidolon.