It's irritating for losing query volume, but it became harder and harder to generate good ideas in the past few years.

Using tools like UberSuggest (ubersuggest.org) which runs off Google Suggest, or pulling from Google itself (http://clients1.google.com/complete/search?hl=en&output=tool...) is better.

Since Suggest is for users, and it shows the most popular, you can cream off suggested queries which may be based on query volumes. It's relative, but it'll do for now :)

It's very frustrating that they gated this feature. It's probably going to be great for more focused targeting (they can see exactly who wants to add what keywords to their web page). but as the OP states, there is about 1/2 of the features in this new version AND you need to sign up for AdWords.