Many things are showing the conflict between the game wanting to look good and being easier to play. The others already wrote a bit, so I will answer to the suggestions I like:
1. Highlighting heroes - it shouldn't be a huge star like the created hero has it but how about a subtle difference? For example:
- making their life bar longer in hight
- making a line with same hight as the level star above heroes, same color as the star above the created hero
Question to the team: Right now, there is a mode in the options menu to show or hide life bars. Since no one really disables that (especially since we got Imladris the way it is), couldn't it maybe be possible to always show life bars and enable or disable with that bar extra signs for heroes like the ones I suggested to use?
2. Changing abilities picture/ color to highlight their effect
I do agree that its not that easy to oversee all abilities, especially since edain moved away from using old images and changed them to their own, unique images. I do really like the idea and although some spells combine many functions, there is often one that sticks out. Like cripple strike, which does damage but is first of all a debuff. Special spells, which you can't put into such a code, could remain as they are. Still, it would be much more clear to see the spells impact and I think that you really could sort most spells in that code. Could be worth to think about it at least.
(https://abload.de/img/edainbeispielbildw7k4d.jpg)
(https://abload.de/img/edainbeispielbild1xzkid.jpg)Other abilitys, which cause an area of effect, could also have their summoning circle color changed