Why is bioware's mantra in regards to enemy units and their attacks: "if it doesn't stun you it has to sync kill you" Or both in some cases.
It seems bizarre that bioware either want us dead at the behest of RNG with no chance of escape or dead because we've been hit by one attack at the wrong moment.
This hardly speaks of intuitive difficulty, and would it not have been better to implement enemy types which better synergise with one another, and have genuine interesting attacks (give banshee teleport field the same effect that annihilation field has for instance, as a quick example) instead of the rather dull, uninventive and quite frankly counter-intuitive staggers and sync kills; which detract thoroughly from player enjoyment when they jump on you unprepared.
Was it a lack of foresight in using the same enemies from the campaign (where frankly sync kills and staggers are nowhere near as much of an issue) without adjusting their mechanics, was it genuine sadism on the developer's part, or is there a legitimate reason why the game struggles to be "difficult" in a traditional, enjoyable, challenging sense. Instead replacing true difficulty with "artificial" difficulty in the form of completely removing player control on a regular basis and leaving them dead or close to death without ever giving them so much of a chance to react.
Post script: I know your NDA forbids discussing what might be coming, but I would strongly advocate some sort of quick time event (similar to the husk grabs, though with a much smaller window) where players can escape from sync kills on their own. ("Press 'F' Rapidly to escape" ?). Meaning players who could react fast enough to the situation can evade an untimely and quite frankly unfair demise.