Elemental bowazon was a super challenging leveling process. Lots of kiting, trips back to town for pots, and dodging dodging dodging! I enjoyed all of the leveling process despite how brutal it was (lv1-130 in a few days), especially all the new mobs and fights like Lister that bring new life into the game. There were also some nice skill tree improvements made to this particular build (as opposed to physical bowazon) which really helped out (keeping trinity arrow at level 1, slowly leveling wyrmshot to work with current mana pool). All in all I made it to 130 with a single reroll.
I do want to say that some of the builds people are complaining about leveling are later game builds. If your character is an amazing bosser like cold werewolf, it makes sense that you'd struggle in the early game to level up. You're rewarded in the late game by being able to run all the bosses for trophies as fast as any build. Same is true for bowazon, which is super hard to level. Your payoff is that you now have one of the best farming builds in the game to hit Duncraig, Fauzt, and Scosglen with MF gear and flourish.
Granted, it shouldn't feel impossibly rough, especially for newer players, but Median has a lot of nuance built into it and with some small steps (such as farming Countess a few times for low level runewords, dedicating early crystals to a TU weapon and its uptiering, mystic orbing gear if you're stuck) I think some of these builds are much more manageable.
We also probably wouldn't be playing Median if levels 1-100 were just handed to us. If we wanted easymode D2, we'd play clod, but clearly we're looking for a challenge. Not just a lategame challenge, but the challenge of flexibly building a character in the early-midgame and adapting whatever we find on the ground to make our build work out. The free rerolls up to level 50 help this out a lot too.
All in all I feel like even the builds I've had trouble leveling are still totally workable given a little ingenuity and some faithful item research. I'd be willing to bet the same for some of the other frustrated people here. That, or maybe you're paying the price now for having a strong build later in the game.