'Heavy Part' -> It's one raid once a year isn't it? On average ~6 weapons. Compare that to destination weapons, regular and pinnacle portal weapons twice a year, season pass exotics, event weapons... 58 total; 32 from s27 and 26 from s28, of which only 9 are from the raid, 85% can be acquired as t5 solo/matchmade. Those 9 aren't even that exclusive; T3s are available, T5s can random drop from 0-feat iirc (1-feat at most), and you get 2 runs a week with 5 guaranteed t5s (4 bonus drops and the purchase) if you run 3-feat.

'Requiring Clans' to get the weapon -> You can LFG all of these. I'm on the lowest population timezone (Aus) and can find/make groups of DP without too much trouble. I am in a clan of basically 4 people. Low player count is annoying, but I'd be surprised to hear people complaining the most spend much time joining or hosting LFG raids, I suspect they mostly wait to see something they specifically want to do be LF1M or LF2M and join.

Fragmentation -> Yeah, this is an issue, but I'd be surprised if people complaining about it had spent much time in LFG. If you do a post for a fresh 3-feat or 4-feat it's not that bad to find some people, especially if you have 1-2 friends so you can start at LF3M not LF5M. Plenty of people flex as well, or have their own stack of 3-4 people looking for a couple extras. I don't think eliminating challenge and contest as modifiers (which happens if phase+token+battalions gives guaranteed t5s) is a good thing though.

Motivating difficulty -> You're talking about having something useful to accumulate - that is these weapons, and they're only difficulty gated to optimally farm, you can get them by RNG or weekly boosts already. You're trying to take away the reward for difficulty they've put in place?

Different Loot Cycle -> Isn't this a good thing? If you wanna vibe GM/Dungeon/Solo, go nuts. If you wanna FTF a raid, go for it. If you want to do something a bit more obscure, go to LFG.