Kitsune, I totally get your approach. I did a bit of acoustic music before electronic so my workflow was also "acoustic". I focused a lot on melodies, while I noticed that in EDM it's not the most important thing. I believe it's all about energy. I use Ableton Live, which I find pretty good. It's simple and easy to use. Session view is somehow nice to prototype, but I move away from it quickly once I get one idea done. Still, any DAW kills my creativity. You know, I have that groove in my head, open DAW and start clicking all out. In the middle I forget the entire groove. I tried many approaches, like having a large MIDI keyboard, but it didn't work for me. Takes too much space, and yeah easier to input melodies, but still, not inspiring. So I sold it, and tried plenty of gear. Tried Ableton Push, but sold it. Too many pads, modes. Couldn't get my muscle memory work for it. Tried to go the other way, all hardware. Owned Korg Electribe 2 for a while, and it was fun to create tiny tracks, but limiting and frustrating to make a real track.
I currently own MPC Studio, which I like because of it's simplicity. 16 pads, good presets to play with, easy to prototype. I don't create full tracks in it, but it's fun to create sketches. Once realizing that I really like 4x4 pads layout (not too little, not too much, easy to get your muscle memory around it), I bought MPD218 as a generic 16 pads controller to use in Ableton Live and it works like charm. But I just started, so we'll see how it goes. My dream setup at this moment is Ableton Live + MPC Live + Novation Peak. Maybe some day...
I heard that Cubase is pretty good. I never used it due to the silly dongle you always need attached to your laptop. I hate dongles. You forget and you can't produce :|. And my laptop has only one USB port, so I'd need a USB hub. More cables for no reason. Have you considered trying Ableton Live?
Cheers!