To me it has more to do with application than anything.
If I was welding flat, or welding horizontal, I would run spray-arc and just lay in the weld.
But on mirror welds, I would switch to Pulse Welding and carefully put in the weld. That gave me so many options, up, down, horizontal, flat...but it was not like I was making hundreds of feet of weld in a day either.
But on vertical-up welds: there was nothing better than flux-core. Holy smolies I could lay in weld after weld with that, and get something done in a day. Try that with pulse welding and you would be there until retirement.
So it depends on the task at hand. There is no perfect welding application, you adapt and overcome by using the most productive process for what you are doing. And it is not hard with a versatile machine. Have a bottle of 75/25 on hand, and a bottle of 95/5 on hand, and it gives you all those options.