There is a method to the madness of the legendaries not getting you to 30--prolong a game that's severely lacking content. As you said, you spent days (over multiple weeks because of the marks cap) grinding out faction points to buy gear. You spent at least a day or two farming materials. You log in every day to play the same story missions on 28 to get two shards (unless you need shards then you get energy). After all those dozens--if not hundreds--of hours you have to repeat the entire process again on the raid gear. It's a system--as is the RNG--designed to force the player to spend at least an hour or two in-game every day. They get away with it because most people don't feel they've completed a game until they hit max level. If you could hit 30 in a week or two then no one would play the game (the servers are bare enough after CoD released) so this keeps people "interested" until the pseudo-expansion pack comes out.