Agreed. After you've spent millions of ECs and tens of thousands of dilithium upgrading gear, you're pretty much going to keep it until MK 14 purples become available in-game. I was thinking of switching from cannons to beams, but now that I've upgraded a few of my cannons, I'm stuck hoping they improve cannons in-game.
Argala rewards almost 3x the XP that it did before, but the ground missions in Kobali Prime don't. It's 1720 XP now, vs 900 before. Levelling with ground missions will take a lot longer.