So, at maximal upgrade, spells take 2 hours per relic, and if you are doing CC 4x/day, then that's 252 of each every 9 weeks. Got it. Just trying to understand where you are coming from.
And from helping, you might get ~7 of each relic from help chests, which is only 3-4% of what you need. I also assume you've saturated the world map, which gives ~10 relics per exploration, which might take ~3 days, so maybe that brings it up to ~10% of what you need. Storyline quests give you relics, but those are not repeatable. Events can give relics -- I used to get hundreds from each event, but that's not reliable. I can see why you are a proponent of tournaments.
At the same time, if you are making CC spells in your academy, then each CC spell as a prize is worth at least 3 relics to you -- and specifically the relics you need, so arguably it's worth 9 random relics, if the others are useless.
Long story short, if you are using the relics to make CC spells, then getting CC spells as prizes should be as useful to you as getting relics -- it's just a matter of quantity.