I am doing the same and started a few days ago. Only level 14 but I've tried Combat Medic and Gunnery and definitely prefer Gunnery. You can heal pretty well as even at my low level I was able to pop off a few 175k healing warzones. I just didn't enjoy it much. I'm probably going to go straight Gunnery till 50 and then tinker with the build.
I was hoping to be sort of a affliction warlock with my balance build sage but the DoT damage just isn't very good. Unfortunately, spamming telekinetic throw while throwing out DoTs here and there is the best bet for damage in this spec I've found.
That isn't a bug. It's an advantage of holding a turret node. I did however hop on to a speeder last night and proceeded to fly around in circles the entire warzone without landing. I couldn't join the fight, but I had a really neat view of the warzone the whole time.
I'm not sure that fixes anything. Clicking on the warzone symbol on the mini-map is the ONLY way I queue. Not to mention I always uncheck the requeue option after each warzone(since I almost always run with premades).
PvE is about twice as fast for me, but you can level decently in PvP. If you try to level through PvP exclusively though, you are probably going to get burnt out unless you REALLY love warzones.