I never chased after any of the "good stuff", the EP weapons, Sleeper, etc. I play solo and - at the time - was what everyone here would have considered 'casual'. I used whatever random stuff I got that I liked. I didn't even check out Xur, or even know what he was until about, until I hit maybe six or seven months of off-and-on play. I had a decent amount of Exotics, but thought most of them were dumb (including a few that weren't, because Bungie is bad at explaining things when they even bother to try) and dismantled them.

To get through Solstice mostly on my own (to the extent that one could), I ground out the remaining half of the Prophetic weapons I hadn't gotten for a better range of items to use, and especially for Perfect Paradox, which was the first shotgun I didn't immediately dismantle ("Why would I want to use something I have to get close to use? I'm a future space wizard!") I also ground out Worldline Zero, other Mars stuff, and six or seven catalysts and three or four other item quests I had ignored. I was so proud of myself for that, for getting all of that done and resplendent armor on two of my characters in a month.

I even grew to really like the look of the Prophecy stuff (part of the reason why I never pursued it initially is at first I hated all the Vex milk tubes sticking out of the weapons.) A few weeks later, I'm dismantling all of them for parts. It gave me a lot of pause about why I had done any of it. These are game assets that Bungie has that are mostly disposable now. They serve no purpose. So I fully endorse bringing them back as random rolls.