Psywave was a mistake - Abra initially had Confusion, but before release I intended to buff her a bit by giving her Psybeam but mixed up that and Psywave. The strategy for Abra is to use her to unlock the Viridian City market vendors & cop either Psyshock or Psychic. She turns into a glass cannon at that point, and can usually outspeed her competition and land Hypnosis if you go that route as well.
Purifying Salt does work, but Abra doesn't have the bulk to fully take advantage of it. Magnet Pull is there purely for thematic reasons around the spoons. She's unique from Gastly in that Gastly has more or less her maximum power straight out the gate. Her power curve upon evolving will kind of just keep her at the same level. Abra, though, is considerably more dramatic. You'll really start to feel that when she evolves - Magnet Pull is there to keep them in check. With almost anything else, Kadabra & Alakazam would run completely rampant (at least, they did in my testing). I agree that Abra is the less powerful choice, though. I've added a moveset overhaul to her for next update and I'll continue to look for sneaky ways to buff her (things like the market in Viridian) that make her a more viable choice without directly increasing her max power.
You don't mention this at all so I'm going to bring it up here - you know that Control types can steal a mon after the battle, right? They come with some EV training, an egg move, and usually an item as well. You can snag some of the most powerful mons in the game like this.
You control the mons you possess -- not everything will be good with Levitate or Bad Dreams. That's for you to decide who you want to target with those!
EV Training is a slower burn! I'm adding areas that have exclusively one EV type (Pewter Mine is the first, with only Machop). I don't want to just cram all of these locations into the first chunk of the region, though! There might be a temporary deal, but I haven't decided on that yet.