I might be a few years out of date now (no WPF since 2011) but all I remember of Blend is it was so complex to learn and use that it was easier just to hand-code my XAML. Not at all like the GUI builders of yore. That may have changed though.

It is a different mindset, not just dragging boxes around and setting properties.

The idea of Bled is to mix those RAD concepts with Photoshop like tooling for designers.

I still find it easier than trying to make web pages look like the Photoshop mockups.

For sure, and I'm not saying Blend's a bad tool (far from it). It was just total overkill for what I wanted to do and, if I wanted to use Blend well, I had to read another 800-1000 page book, after the one I'd read to learn WPF and XAML. It just didn't justify the time in terms of what I needed to achieve on a relatively short timescale at that point.