Finale is very widely used, and also very widely disliked, for the reasons that you give and some others, as well--I doubt that Sibelius will give you $300 worth of relief, though--I tried it out a couple years back, and found that it had weaknesses of its own--Overture was my favorite, but seems no longer to be available(Opcode being defunct)--

If you work through the initial Hell of Finale, things will go a lot easier, and you will be able to do most everything you need--it does take work though--it helps to remember that you are learning a complex craft that is not easy to master under any circumstances, and that, as difficult as it seems to manage the software, before the software, arrangers usually had to hire copyists to turn their scriblings into something that was readable and playable--