Looks like it's deadlocked. As one of the older players here, I can say for sure that I lasted a pretty long time without a djinn and I was one of the strongest characters on the site. I recently got a djinn this year, but the power of a king candidate is not to be underestimated. It depends on the magic, things like razor, you can't heal if you get a clean hit on a person. DMV's have the flexibility of creating their own magical combination on the fly to be their vessel, even if staff makes the passive afterward for both the magic and the vessel.
The only restriction is that you can't use magic, but if you were already a swordsman with a mv weapon that's a sword, the only difference is that you now have an inherent A tier weapon that does a tier ability damage. You are on a timer for that, so i can see that using magic and also getting your magic depleted each turn could suck. However, you all are wrong about extreme magic. Can't be scale and the damage is nerfed, but that's only if you explore only damage for extreme magic. It's the strongest ability in the game, you can really do close to whatever you want within reason.
I voted for the A rank, mostly i would say an omega tier character that's maxed with some tools on the side can win. The KC can also win if the kC is also the same tier character with some magic tools in addition to their vessel. You don't start a fight with your MV or DMV, you are moving towards the climax around that time and more often than not, you are transforming to use your extreme magic.