I respect your opinion. Please let me know if you continue to believe they are fine or if you change your mind on them.
Actually, the point you made about dwarves being harder to remove is certainly true. Coming up against a dwarf deck, and a defender in a round (when there's no easy way to remove the defender), makes things pretty tough going.
I only play Northern Realms because I can't be bothered with any others (probably due to coming back to the game through Thronebreaker). I hate Northern Realm decks that consist in giving units charges, spawning commandos, and then transforming them into spectres which spawn further spectres with a death kill. I personally like to play a varied deck that I find interesting. Normally, it doesn't fare very well against dedicated spawn decks, etc.
I'd prefer that most cards had a random auto trigger mechanism, instead of players being able to manually target specific cards with attacks (much like certain catapults, etc.). most of the dwarven units should only be playable on the melee row, yet they can be spawned on the ranged row and seemingly (when transformed into rowdy dwarves) engage in some sort of melee attack (this problem of cards that should be melee only pervades GWENT). The result is that using weather, or some other row effect, can easily be avoided by playing melee attack units on the ranged row. Nor should archers be playable on the melee row (if played out of position, I think they should suffer some type of penalty).
However, for me, on balance, I'd say that defenders, as they currently exist, have helped me against decks that are designed to either steal units, spawn monsters, traps, etc., better than without defenders (when the right cards are in play behind the defender).
I've found some players, particularly with a high level of 'prestige' abandon casual matches for no good reason, as far as I can tell. I guess they think they're too good to play certain players of lower rank, or who play defenders, etc. That's because most know that defenders make it harder for them to steamroller other players if used well.
Personally, I think there's too much spawning of certain types of cards; certain decks able to play and draw too many cards in one round (with help of leader abilities or otherwise); too much dependence on monsters consuming and 'thriving' (it's supposed to be warfare against an opponent, not consuming allies and 'thriving'); too much dependence on stealing other players cards (some as high as 6 points if they have the tactics), etc., etc.
I'd like to see, as stated earlier, more cards that play with a random attack element, or a one off attack - not charges, boots etc. (some bootsing is OK). For me, playing a deck where you're just dishing out charges and spawning loads of units (then boosting) is a bit rubbish - not a lot of skill involved really. At the moment, as someone stated earlier, you can look online for current strong deck (usually a spawn, steal or charge deck), and tailor your own deck accordingly.
I've lost count of the amount of decks I've encountered like the ones above. People very rarely use a novel deck that is fun to play (despite the fact it'll probably lose), because they're interested only in winning. However, if the deck is stacked in your favour, it's not much of a victory in my books. I'd like the game to require an element of skill - like chess, but with card units - probably difficult to attain.