Hum...are you saying since I use LR for printing, I'm neither an artist nor do serious printing?
It sounds like you are bending over backwards to convince yourself that your collection of apps will serve you better than Lightroom. You go right ahead and use your collection of apps with a primitive workflow and try to convince yourself you are doing the right thing. Some of us will keep using the best overall toolset for them.
BTW, I often use LR to deal with 80MP captures with no real slowdown-even though I'm using a 2014 Macbook Pro (my main system is in the process of being updated). So, some people find LR fast enough for work...
The OP mentioned he is "sick of the printing module.."
I am in agreement, and sharing my solution....
I'm saying that if it doesn't meet your artistic needs or work demand, there are other options that are relatively inexpensive and have great support.
For the past 3 or more updates and version, going into the Page Settings initiates the starting of a print job. Weird. It shouldn't do that. Luckily I useually use print preview, but it has botched up a number of large paper jobs.
Other than that, I like how you can do text overlays when needed, but not for multi image printing.
Qimage, you drop in the files and it works like a RIP and uses paper and image area very smartly. Also has a good set of basic adjustment tools that may need getting used to a bit, but work nice with very good results.
I'm a firm believer of dedicated applications, and there is nothing wrong with launching an app to do a task. I have learned that when an application does a lot of things, it is either porr at doing it, or something like speed or user friendly interface, or something suffers.
Some of us LR users are experiencing this exact issue. I still use folder structure organization. It keeps me from being locked into LR, and keeps things simple.
I like to KISS :-)