I don't know how people haven't figured out after 10 years that the Warrior of Light is neither the main character of FFXIV nor a particularly important one. You are a narrative device, dragged around by the main characters (the Scions, specifically the Leveilleur twins) to bear witness to the political dramas that unfold around them. You're also frequently brought out as a weapon when the solution to one of the Scions' problems is violence (this justifies occasional gameplay breaking up the storytelling).

Yes, even as far back as the beginning of ARR, there's been something "special" about the WoL, but it's a side-story at best. As another commenter pointed out, the game is really about the Scions installing (hopefully) stable leaders in unstable nations. Dawntrail was the next iteration of this. Its pacing was no better or worse than any of the other expansions, excepting Shadowbringers, the only FFXIV expansion that was (mostly) paced extremely well.

I think Wuk Lamat would get way less hate if she had featured less prominently in the second half of Dawntrail. I thought she was quite endearing in the first half of the expansion, and enjoyed her path to Dawnservant. She should've stayed in Tuliyollal while the Scions went to deal with the very Scion problems of Alexandria and Sphene. As it was, she was shoehorned into being the main character, still, despite being in way over her head, which just made that entire plot line worse than it would've been otherwise (and it would've been way too rushed either way).