I'm with you , bad.....I think regular old coils perform as good or better than the tricky stuff. I've actually gone back to spaced coils on most of my stuff. It takes about 4 minutes to rebuild and wick an RDA and the performance is excellent. I like tinkering around with some of the more complex builds, but after a short time, I put a standard build back in.
Wicks? I use Shesheido, fantasea cotton or rayon. I haven't touched a cotton ball in ages.
OP... As boring and uncool as it may sound, try a dual coil build of 6 wraps of .26ga spaced on a 2.5mm bit. Wick it so the ends are laying in the juice well but don't pack a bunch of cotton in there. Leave room for air to pass under the coils. Its boring and you won't need anywhere near 150 watts, but the flavor is fantastic and, if you build it right, you'll be happy with the vapor.