I just finished my fist playthrough on hard with two lone wolf characters and I understand your problem perfectly. In fact, in the late game I had more trouble puzzling out what the game wanted me to do with a given situation than winning the battles along the way.
To be truly honest I'm looking forward to the update package with the new difficulty setting above hard to start my next walkthrough at. Hopefully that will be a bit more challenging.
Unfortunately I'm a compulsive min-maxer so I have no real suggestions regarding character builds other than gimping them. I will monitor this thread though, hopefully you get some good ideas.
