Just read the OP. Well-thought out. A post I, and I'm confident much of the raiding community, strongly supports.
At it's core, we need more challenging encounters that take days/weeks, NOT hours, to complete on maximum difficulty 16m.
The bugs are similarly significant. However, there has clearly been a marked improvement between EV and Karagga in terms of bug prevalence. Just please don't lose your ambition for introducing interesting mechanics because you're afraid of creating a few bugs, devs! Soa is very buggy at the moment, but is probably the most interesting of the encounters so far (I personally also enjoy The Annihilator Droid and Karagga).
I would add further comment, but Jinga presented all the points my guild have been discussing for weeks very well.