I have near instant tank queues for most roulettes I queue for, and I still haven't gotten even halfway through this part of the quest.

It's just too much. Either two (rewarded) runs of the Expert Roulette, or two runs of ARF will only give me enough for one umbrite. That's a good hour, for one item, which I'm going to need 60 of. And although people say that the sands are easy, I can't see any that you can really grind without sinking even more hours than you'd need for the Umbrites. And on top of that, I have no idea how to allocate my stats, because people just give me vague answers, instead of some hard numbers to aim for, so I don't even see it as being a good weapon when I get to the end of it.

Getting sharpened weapons isn't a sign of skill at the game, it's a sign that you had the patience to mindlessly grind out the hyperconductive equivalent weapon.