You're wishlist would the system into something else, and you can do all this with the rules as designed.

-Health pools: Your narrative should allow for rest and the player to player healing option (p103) after combat. Once they get confident in this you'll be safer. Also, if that much combat is tied together you might be using it too much for Numenera.

-Combat drag: The system is meant to encourage wanting alternative solutions to combat, so it sounds like it is working as intended.

-Glaive: This is a character creation issue and it seems the Destiny book will address some of this. But it is likely the player poorly diversified at character creation and went to D&D focused on cool combat options.

-Roll 1: This sounds like a need for better use of intrusions. Rolling 1s are a fail forward Han Solo style. Frequent 1s are also a part of the system.

It sounds like your players want Pathfinder or D&D set in the 9th world, which a lot of people are doing and is still a ton of fun. The Cypher System isn't for everyone.