My perspective as a new player who started in 2018

[Edax]

Lol.It's just my personal opinion.

You do get solo boss-esque battles in HW and Stormblood,some of which you don't even have NPCs with you like Estinien's boss battle in the dragoon questline so no I kinda disagree here xD

Again I'm relatively new so maybe that's why I don't have much hatred towards Stormblood.....maybe that'll change in the future but right now I did like most what I got from it except Eureka which was bleh

Well, I only finished HW at the end of patch 4.0 because I wanted a chance at getting a Shirogane house (boy was that a let down), so I ended up blowing through Heavensward and Stormblood's story at lightning speed back to back. Granted, Stormblood's story isn't over with, but I could really feel the difference in the quality of storytelling since I experienced both expansions within weeks of each other.