[lcnPylGDnU4H9OF]

> makes it much harder to query things

This seems overstated. It’s different but not really harder.

  document.querySelector('my-lit-element').elementIWant;

  class MyLitElement extends Lit {
    get elementIWant() {
      return this.renderRoot.querySelector(...);
    }
  }

Though, maybe one doesn’t like querying twice. I’m not sure of performance implications there, to be honest, but I’d expect it to be negligible in most cases.