529 is absolutely still a good deal, for at least 2 years' of expenses, particularly if you get the state tax deduction, and if your kids are still young. The value of the 529 isn't so much in the tax deduction, although that helps; it's that you literally never pay any tax on the growth if you use the funds for educational expenses (and after 15-20 years, the growth is a major part of the account value). A regular brokerage account, you're paying taxes on the dividends and capital gains your investments throw off every year, even if you don't ever see them. So, sure, if you keep your income low enough in 15-20 years that you stay in the 0% CG tax bracket,* you don't pay taxes on the amount you cash in for college. But you've already paid X number of years of taxes on Y dividends/capital gains, and the tax rate for those was based on your much higher current income. So you have less money available to cover those college expenses.
But really, the question is how much choice do you want your kids to have over the schools they go to? If your primary strategy is to keep your numbers low so you can rely on getting a great financial aid package, then your kids will need to go to the school that gives them the best package -- meaning more grants and fewer loans. And that significantly narrows their options, because a lot of schools will (a) assume "affordable" parent contributions that are well above what any reasonable human would expect, and (b) use loans to fill the gap. So if you don't want your kid -- and yourselves -- to have to take out a lot of loans, that often means is choosing a "safety" school -- there are a number of schools that are trying to improve their numbers and so will throw merit scholarships at highly-qualified kids to convince them to go there.
I'm not disparaging this, btw; that is a perfectly valid path, and my DD applied to several safeties to see if the money they offered made it worthwhile to go there (spoiler: it didn't). But the stress that most of her friends went through trying to find the aid they needed to afford the schools they wanted really stuck with me. We had saved a good chunk, and we made sure that DD applied only to schools that we could afford without relying on getting any aid at all.** And I think my DD finally really "felt" her privilege when she realized how much less stressed she was because she didn't need to worry about that like all of her friends did, because she knew she could afford to go anywhere she was admitted.
I know this is sort of rambling, but I guess the tl;dr is don't let the tail wag the dog. Educate yourself on what "good financial aid" actually means -- all of the colleges now have net price calculators, so you can plug in your assumed income and assets and see how much they'd expect you to pay and how much you and your kids would be expected to borrow. Then, after you pick yourself back up from the heart attack, figure out how much choice you want your kids to have in the process and how much choice you can afford to offer given the other demands on your budget, and put aside an amount to get you there.
*Assuming it still exists, which I am totally not banking on.
**She is considering med school, so we really did not want any undergraduate loans, because any post-grad work will be on her dime.
