Oh I am realizing when reading my post again that I meant rest mode and not pose mode in "If I really want to make a change that is not recorded in animations, I need to move to pose mode, but I don't believe that this is the intended behavior."
... And about possible solutions, I am really not sure ^^' what I can say is that I don't expect changes that have no corresponding track to be recorded in the animation... But I may be missing something in the concepts of pose mode and rest mode.
I suppose that if a change in pose mode is not affecting animations, then it does not make much sense... Or it should affect rest values? This is what happened in earlier versions, if I understand correctly. It was actually not that counter intuitive: if the change is not recorded in an animation, then it is "global" and "persistent"
I'm sorry, but I don't think that I am able to make good suggestions for this situation ^^' I hope that I could give a few bits of useful information at least...