No less a personage than Jeff Schewe uses Lightroom as the primary image editor and only uses Photoshop when he needs to.
He also seems to much prefer printing from Lightroom.
Well, yes, I know Photoshop pretty well...but really the older Photoshop pre CS. The reason I knew Photoshop so well is it was my day job...I was an advertising photographer who shot images designed for composition and then all the digital imaging myself. However, when CS first came out, Photoshop started adding a lot of functionality that I had little or no need for.
Because I essentially retired from commercial work about a decade ago and quit shooting film and adopted digital capture, I gravitated to first Camera Raw and then finally Lightroom. Since I don't get commissioned to do big huge image combos anymore, I've actually gone away from that and gone back to more traditional photography with far less Photoshop work.
I still am really pretty good in Photoshop for those things I still need to do but with each release of ACR/LR, there is less need to take things out of LR and into Photoshop. No, I could not give up using Photoshop...but I use a relatively small percent of Photoshop these days...mainly for the most accurate selections and layers & masking and full blown retouching...could I adopt a lesser application instead of Photoshop. I suppose, but why learn a new program when I know Photoshop so well. Photoshop is many things to many different kinds of users. It's actually remarkable that the program Thomas Knoll wrote way back in the late 1980's has kept growing and improving for over 2 decades...and that Thomas is still working at Adobe (Thomas doesn't "need" to work, he just can't help himself :~)
I agree that when Adobe killed CS7 and perpetual licenses they did a poor job of it. It was something Adobe felt they hard to do. But I think the reaction by many was way, way over the top. Yes, Adobe has given some other bright boy with some real skills an opportunity to come up with something that could replace Photoshop for those things photographers still need Photoshop for. We'll see...I don't see anything on the horizon but who knows what's being developed right now. But, sad to say, the market isn't really all that big for photographers and the nature of the industry is moving away from big iron big apps towards mobility and fast and easy. I think the time for somebody to come along with a "Photoshop Killerâ„¢" has long passed away...those users who still need Photoshop will keep using Photoshop, those that don't, won't.
But, I wouldn't bet against Adobe...they still have a lot of really bright people working for them.