Gonna need a therapist

Blend controls are for people who either A. Don't know how to use compressors or B. Can't make a decision.

Maybe

blend knobs are for people with hybrid setups that can't do parallel compression like you can on a console

Parallel compression is pretty meh for me, I'm not into it. Sometimes a split where the second is EQ'd and compressed differently is great, but I don't enjoy the "smashed + dry" thing many are crazy for. Multibands are tough - Nova 67P is the only one I like, and it's a dynamic EQ.

Multi mic'ing is fine. Sometimes necessary.

HPF and LPF's are fine for Metal or EDM, but they can sound more than a little bogus when used on more traditional fair.

With a console & a decent can do it all if and when I want ! That's why even if your 100% in the box a fucking Mackie is a must!

That's a big piece I'm not thinking about. I don't think I've ever had more than 30 tracks to mix other than a pair of tracks sent to me by american recordings which SHOULD have been less than 30 tracks but topped 60.

40 tracks? The pop track i am working on now has 95 tracks and no vocals have been cut yet. Huge production. Blend and parallel compression are musts in that genre. I certainly know how to use a compressor and sometimes choose to slam it really hard and have the meters pegged and pull the mix knob back so I am using only 15% of that crushed signal. Nothing ignorant about that nor is it a fetish. It works. The Elysia X-pressor is great for that effect.

go listen to some modern hip-hop with an insane amount of samples and vocal ear candy occurring.   their typical production style is 'one sound, one track'

For analog mix, i don't use submixing, simply because i have just 2 stereo group channelstrips, and honestly, i don't *need* it anyway most of the time. That said, analog mixing feels very natural and fast to me and i still get the results i want with minimal effort, mostly EQ only, minimal compression. Sometimes i apply compression or volume automation ITB before feeding to the console. Hybrid, why not...
For ITB mixing i make a kind of standard use of group busses, because it sounds good in Mixbus, even compression or limiting and the filters on the stereo busses. I can get quite a lot of GR in a pleasant way with this multi stage compression, but i try to avoid this. But i admit i use levelers too often, where i should use gain automation/editing/fader riding. Guilty as charged. But it really sounds good in Mixbus most of the time and just works for me. Sometimes now also an instance of the Klanghelm gets used to do this. Honestly - still i should use more fader riding.(sigh)
Also, this way i get the tape emulation, which reminds me of adding an 8-track tape recording stage in the busses. I love it and it often makes things sit very well in a mix at no cost and without even having to think about it consciously. If some tracks need more tape saturation, i simply give them their own busses just for that. Works well for me.
At the moment i mostly have a drum bus, bass gets one of it's own, then typically i continue with vocals, then effects/echo for vocals, the reverb bus and then guitars, keys, whatever...
Pretty basic, and i came to this order because this way i never lose focus on the essentials, and i don't tend to exaggerate guitars or keys this way. I noticed, that i used to make these too loud in many early mixes of mine, often because i thought i would underrate these tracks, coming from rhythm section/bass as a musician. I was sooo wrong.
(Never listen to dedicated guitarists and keyboarders - they always feel they are too quiet, on stage, in the studio, everywhere they go. Vocalists sometimes worse. Bassmen are good AEs with balanced ears often, and sometimes drummers too. And of course many multi-instrumentalists...
Personal opinion from experience. YMMV, obviously. :-D )
As for techniques like multi micing, parallel compression, gear with blend knobs, multiband compression, gate instead of editing, things that appear to some as dubious or bad style and to others as absolutely indispensible tools - whatever brings you to the goal. For sure i would try to catch bass and guitar amp tracks with 2 complimenting mics just for the option to maybe blend these to the character sound that you may not get with one mic and an EQ amyway, no matter how perfectly recorded.
Many acoustic instruments, too! And yes, why not trying an M/S micing on some sources...if it works it works.
Nobody is *forced* to use these techniques (well, except you have a producer in the back who forces you....). These are just tools - very good to know how it works, even if you never use it...

Naked 2 bus, I'm saying thats what the bigwigs i know do, get the best mix you can with a naked 2 bus, with sub mixes it allows you to treat stereo pairs of like instruments, getting them to row in the same direction, i even hold off on that until close to the end, single channel compression is essential/useful, but not if you get everything doing its own thing, musicality is paramount to processing, and it's easiest to achieve with sub mixes, if you're all done and you've maximized your DR and S/N ratio's, and you want to give a client a loud master? then smash away, but don't mis lead yourself by mixing into something thats multiplying every instance of compression AND NOISE floor you have.

Remember that every serial addition of compression is a multiplication of the one preceding it, not addition, mixing into a 2 buss compressor is putting the cart before the horse IMV, build a song from the foundation up, 2 buss compression is icing usually applied by a ME... at the very end.
Just my 2 cents, hope that helps.

As for the 2-buss processing, i guess it can depend heavily on the music style and the mastering engineer you are working with or maybe even are forced to work with....
I apply stereo spread, pultec or baxandall style, sometimes another EQ, and recently vari-mu (Klanghelm). In the very end i always have the Tischmeyer meter nowadays. Great tool.
This said, style ist mostly electronic and there 2-buss processing can be an essential part of the music that you may not want to leave to the mastering guy.
I heard from successful producers of all genres around here, who squeeze everything out of their mix including master compression and are very picky about even the smallest change the ME does or want to make. In fact they want to stay in command of their product and are control freaks in a good way. If you are very good at mixing, the ME might be only the guy who makes QC and signs for technically trouble free premaster quality, so everyone and the label is happy...