It's my current belief that, given a particular computing environment and a particular data set, both complexity and performance are conserved in web publishing, no matter what workflow or tool-set is used.
That's to say, the complexity of any given step in the process of web publishing is reduced only by shifting that complexity to the other steps. Total complexity remains constant.
I'm borrowing scientific terms to convey my thought but doing so in a loose way, since I have no way to quantify "complexity" in this case. It's a subjective combination of how many steps are needed to get things done -- and how much effort and mental overhead is needed to accomplish them.