I went to both years, both only skimmed past Donruss cards, not even thinking about the Leaf/Donruss deal, and went straight to Leaf sets.
It doesn't help that, like you said, the All-Star cards used to come out the year after. Thanks to Topps these days, I'm conditioned to think that the All-Star cards are from the same year as the game...
I'll never quit collecting entirely, but I am downsizing. Check out my COMC store and help me thin out what I don't want so I can buy cards that I do want. See something you like? Send me a message on here, and we can knock the price down quite a bit. I'll even take a bit of a loss if it means getting you a card you really want.