My personal soldering system is very basic but it was always worked well for me.
I have a 15 watt needle point pencil, a 35 watt standard pencil, a 100/150 buzz gun, a 180/235 watt buzz gun and a propane torch with several different tips.
I can do anything from surface mount to 2 gauge lug connectors. Anything bigger than that I go to the oxy/propane torch.
All of that heat control stuff is nice if you dont know how to solder correctly, but if you learn to do soldering correctly you really dont need it.
I worked for a company that had a $400 automatic heat controled super soldering station. I used it for about two days before I brought my 35 watt pencil and my 100/150 buzz gun to work. The super station went in a storage closet for the rest of the time I worked for them.
I would recommend getting a good pencil type and a good buzz gun. And about 10 pounds of misc sizes of copper wire, straps, sheets, Old circuit boards with various sizes and thicknesses of traces, and misc odd copper pieces and a 1 lb roll of flux core solder and practice until you cant stand to solder any longer.
All of the fanciest equipment in the world wont do you any good if you still dont know how to use them properly.