I agree with everything you said except for the vendors thing. I get faction weapons all the time from pve, mostly the nightfall. Ive got two legendary engram drops playing pve last week both were faction weapons. i don't have any of my faction levels up enough to buy from any of them and i have probably 12 faction weapons.
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Receiving random gear from random drops is nice and all, but It's not the same as being able to choose exactly what you want from the faction vendors. Like the option to get armor which has the 2 stat modifiers that are not available through the Vanguard vendor.