Do you realize how broken stew consumables are?
I get it but keep in mind the game mechanic isn't perfect and won't please everyone. If they lower difficulty some would complain its too easy. The phasing of progression isn't that bad you just need to keep up with stats. And its not even that demanding with consumables. There is requirement issues with gears that yeah it requires some grinding and it can get monotonous and boring.
I would suggest abuse the savescum method. Meaning untick autosave and reload if you fail. That way you won't use consumables and assess the duel better and know what you need. Hell even use 3rd party memory editor to get you resources so you won't need to grind.