Once you start running nightfall strikes and the raid you will get possible legendary/exotics as completion rewards or in chests. At this stage commit to maxing out the vanilla weekly strikes for vanguard coins (100 per week limit) and getting at least level 2 vanguard rep form strikes/bounties, as you can buy legendary clothing from Ikora Rey and then break it down for ascendant shards to level your existing legendary/exotic equipped items (clothes) which will help you level up your light level. Higher light levels mean you don't get one shotted on the raid! You won't need weapons so much once you have a couple in each category/element type, and the raid weapons are the best legendaries. You'll also get possible legendary/exotic weapons from levelling the cryptarch too, by decoding those engrams from each strike, so buying a gun becomes less of an issue. It boosts the ascendant shard collection quicker than doing a daily public event on it's own and hoping for the odd ascendant shard drop (although you should still do one gold tier event each day anyway.) That and do the daily challenge on the hardest level to get 2 ascendant materials - I've been able to solo most of them, be patient and engage from a distance. That helped me jump from 27 to 28 quite quickly once I twigged. Also do the Nightfall ASAP each week as the experience buff then lasts a whole week for anything else (raids/strikes etc) anything to help level up quickly, especially exotic weapons as they take ages. Also you can turn in bounties to collect experience on weapons that you don't use, so if you have a maxed out gun you can use that for the mission, then equip something else to get the exp on that instead from turning in the bounty. You probably knew all this anyway.... lol!