Great post. Almost completely agree.
There is absolutely no reason to change the light level progression after you hit 350. All of a sudden Faction, vanguard, exotic and legendary engrams have a 50% chance to drop below your light level. Ridiculous. It's the classic bullshit Bungie system of gating progress.
TTK also got you raid ready (290) relatively fast by just earning blues simply by playing the game. You didnt HAVE to run strikes or play grind bosses. The quests gave you 300 gear. You even got 310 exotics and artifacts. Now the raid drops were horrible and the grind to 310 was even worse, but at least you were raid ready without grinding and simply by playing the game. I have yet to grind but i played for five hours yesterday and only went up one level. thats not cool.
Lastly, so glad the crucible quests are gone. I nearly went crazy doing the weekly crucible quest last year when it had you win like a 100 games while getting kills with different weapons in different modes. the last word quest broke me.