Even with the high rarity drops it's still not pay to win. You likely have to level up your retainers to even have a chance, but to do that you have to farm seals or beastman dailies to get the ventures. Oh, but they moved the old tome materials to the Companies alongside stacks of ventures, and the new crafter/gatherer gear requires trading in of processed tome materials. You can only do 6 dailies a day and from what I've seen they only give one venture each. Either way, you have to farm to keep in ventures to send your retainers out on. Pay to win, though, is all about instant gratification. Using what you bought to get an immediate leg-up on everyone else.

Insult on injury, noone does some of the early primals except those getting relics to take into +2 or +3. And it's a blue moon when you see normal Thornmarch in party-finder. This is just making it 'easier' to get a primal drop that may or may not drop to begin with.