This sounds like a feature request. I don't like this "improvement" either, there should be an option to disable it.

I agree; I dislike this "improvement". I was able to hack myself a way around it for new posts, but I'm my only user. Were I in a situation with multiple users, I'd vastly prefer to see a user setting or something.

Should we make this a per blog or a per user setting?

Also, where should we return to after posting?

It should probably be per user setting

We should always return to post list when we publish draft items e.g. after we created multiple posts from images. This should be hardcoded and not changed by setting