My thoughts exactly. 100% agree 
Now that I have spent about 5 hours on/with Reaper (first and foremost as a mixing solution), I wholeheartedly regret that I didn’t look at Reaper 18 months ago. Seems like a great mixing environment. And a very flexible one.
Will happily investigate further after the Easter holidays.
See my other thread about re-starting my mixing career 
I will of corse continue to use C6.5 and N5.5, as well as taking advantage of some of the great new features in C7.5. Track Versions in particular when recording multitracked Drumkits and other multimiced sources. For single miced sources like vocal etc, I still like Cubase’s Lanes feature the best. But for mixing … YUK.
The short-term mixing solution is still C6.5, but for mid- to long-term mixing solution I am looking inte Reaper, and PT and S1 (in which I have some experience).
The more Steinberg moves away from the “old” mixer, the more sense even the PT mixer makes.
Remember, I am only talking about the mixer and mixing stage here. For all other purposes Cubase and Nuendo are my nr 1 DAW. Frustrating to say the least, to see the mixer fall off the cliff like this.