I agree on most points you mention steph.
I have a group of 2 locks 2 mages 1 priest at 43 right now and quite frankly I am a little burnt out. I am going to let them collect some rested exp for a couple of days.
The melee group will never perform as good as 5 players with the same classes and they will probably never be as effective in the instances < 70 as the cloth group (aoeing your way through RD is really funny 8) ) but I want to try it anyways.
I have always liked melee type characters and never played a shaman or paladin before, so the worst that may happen is that in a couple of weeks I find out that I can't accomplish anything with that group. So I return to my clothy group with a couple of new macro ideas.
Anyways,
I will try it this weekend and see if it's fun.
Bunny

/edit
Thanks for bringing up the point that holy nova is thread free. I have never fully utilized that fact in my clothy group. Gonna need to change that