I think if you're looking at it from the perspective of "have to" then you're not the type who would be interested in this. Part of the fun is having the bad gear and being short on mats and having to live on the edge a bit.
Yeah, I would rather there just be an option to toggle on/off promotions. That would truer to the name "NoPromotionLords". A more accurate name for people starting alts would be "NoGearOrPromotionLords". I wouldn't have an issue if ability damage wasn't tied to base weapon damage, and having low end gear be orders of magnitude worse than good gear. And it is a "have to" when it comes to getting better gear, because it isn't much fun when it takes half a minute to kill one Venatori Zealot.
Also puts more emphasis on teamwork and smart play rather than relying on the best gear/armor/lots of HoK/high promotions.
I'm all for teamwork. It's already been established that we are talking about no promotions; we are talking about the gear grind. That being said, I think it would still take plenty of teamwork to clear consistently and effectively if the whole team had decent gear and no promotions.
This also kind of sounds like the "Gold vs Platinum" debate of ME3 multiplayer -- I find "10 Venatori Gladiators and 10 Venatori Spellbinders" to be *less* interesting than a more mixed group. Ditto things like 5 Despair Demons at once -- among other things seems to "cheapen" the "elite" status on top of being massively annoying. In ME3 most people preferred Gold over Platinum because Platinum wound up throwing a lot more high HP "boss" type enemies at the players -- limited the available playstyles, made some kits significantly worse, and put a much greater emphasis on raw DPS.
I wouldn't call it "more mixed", because enemy composition goes from multiple types of elite enemies with more interesting attacks that force you to use tactics (Perilous/Nightmare) to two types of generic enemies whos main purposes are "sponge" (footsoldiers, whose defining ability is the jedi block), and "turret" (archers who just sit in one place and shoot you), with one or two strong enemies tossed in for flavor (Routine/Threatening). I would argue that 90% generic enemies with a few stronger ones tossed in is more mundane than 90% more unique enemies with a few generic ones tossed in. That's just my personal preference though.
My issue with Platinum on ME3 wasn't the amount of health enemies had, it was the sync kills most of them had. As I said, I prefer a larger percentage of elite enemies, as long as they are not mostly made up of the same exact type; I think it adds plenty of depth over only having a few. Being able to be killed instantly if you let one get to close or if you have to pass too close by to get past them was my main beef with Platinum.