I imagine you're trying to use it in ways that it's just not designed for. Cmd-`, Cmd-Tab, and Mission Control (Ctrl/Cmd-F3 or three-finger swipe up/down) are powerful enough to do most tasks, especially combined with automatic window tiling.

Nah, the super long delays and animations are by design and make a lot of features like mission control & workspaces unusable. But, if you can tell me a way to switch between only the two most recent windows (note: I said "windows", not "applications") with a single keyboard shortcut and no animation delays, I'll love you forever.