Destiny is an MMO. MMO entails grinding and hours of play to "become legend." If you want to do the raid you just need level 26 or 27, easy to get to. Just for an hour or so a day you can rank up your vanguard (using bounties), once you get rank 3 you'll get a legendary armor or weapon (usually) and a commendation. The commendation can be used to buy a vanguard helmet, chest armor, or weapon. I suggest a weapon unless you get a good primary from the rankup package. It's really not that hard. Just takes some dedication. 27 hours is not dedication, although an experienced player could get pretty far in 27 hours on a new character, because they know the easiest ways to farm. I have around 150 hours, been playing since beta, and I've played with people that have 800 hours; that's dedication to the extreme. If you really want help here's a tip: go to earth and do the patrol missions where you have to take out a target. They're easy and give you 25 vanguard rep instead of 10. The icon for this patrol type is a circle with a star inside. And as always, do the vanguard bounties as well, and make sure you're not wearing a faction class item.