I share your pain, but as an FYI, there were/are substantial problems with vmtools from Workstation 9.x WRT file corruption on Shared Folders if they are being used with Linux guests. Just copying files or opening files things are seriously broken. These problems weren't fixed in VMTools until the ones included in the last release of Workstation 10 (10.0.4 IIRC). If you aren't using Linux guests or Shared Folders in general, you might okay with VMTools from the earlier Workstation versions. Just do a seach of this forum for details, if you're interested.
VMWare seems to have taken the "Add more features" product path and doesn't seem to be concerned with performance at all. I wouldn't complain as much if they had added, ohhhhh, something like DX10 or DX11 support (or the upcoming DX12 in Win 10), but they haven't, we're stuck on the now very, very old DX9 for graphics - soon to be 3 major generations old. - The Great GrandPa of DX versions.
Unfortunate for those of us that use Workstation on a daily basis that we have to suffer with slower USB, slower ethernet and lower WEI numbers with each new release of Workstation and even buying a faster host doesn't seem to help too much either. If it weren't for Windows 8.1/10, I would be on Workstation 9 as well, but even then as new host hardware drops USB2 sockets in favor of USB3, USB3 support will be needed which means a newer version of Workstation. But even Virtual Box doesn't have USB3 support yet..
Thanks for providing the reality of "hard" numbers. Perhaps if people stop buying/upgrading, maybe peformance will take a front seat for a release, but I am not holding my breath for that.