I took an alt though the 2.X patch stories recently. The only parts that really bothered me were during 2.1 when you have to do a bunch of chores and fetch quests around Vesper Bay and Mor Dhona for the Scion's move and during 2.2 when there were some quests that forced you to go to different zones for just a couple of lines of dialog before telling you to change zones again. I found 2.3-2.5 to be pretty solid.

I don't see having to do the main story to unlock content as big deal but that's because the story is the main reason that I play. SE has said that you won't need to finish Heavensward to unlock the next expansion's content but as far as I know they haven't stated if you'll still need to finish all of ARR + the patch stories yet.