You know, it's actually not possible to give effective criticism before ShB launches. You're missing a critical part, you can only speculate on how encounters will be based on your experiences. The whole doomsaying thing really needs to wait until several weeks after launch, so results are normalized and not just whiny, knee-jerk reactions, unless something is so obviously broken that it's unplayable or completely invalidates mechanics.

All of your suggestions are based on theory, but nothing is going to change before it can be put into practice.