I agree that the weapons themselves were not designed well, but without etheric light those weapons would have been the weapons PVE players would play for. A 300 fatebringer compared to a 365 HoW hand cannon? Yes, the problem is that the VOG gear was SO good that those are the only ones that would be used forever if ascending was allowed to continue. The only way to avoid that would be to make new weapons that were more powerful- resulting in each expansion creating more and more powerful (perks) until we all would be wielding nuclear hand cannons. They stopped the ascension to avoid power creep.