"Mission Control forces me to walk through each space"
Try swiping up instead. That'll give you a list of spaces to choose from. Certainly not as direct as your non-OS X WM but faster than stepping through each one.
Usually I'm not making the switch visually. On arch, I know what spaces each application is one and just switch to it instinctively. The visual search and movement to the trackpad ends up being slower and more annoying than a quick Super+3 or whatever it needs to be.