Yeah, Word-style "WYSIWYG" versus LaTeX-style source-code + compiling is really a pretty big philosophical difference. Some people much prefer the latter, and will avoid WYSIWYG LaTeX tools. The marked up source code gives you much better control, and you can use semantic macros that for example allow you to change how you format vectors or chapter titles etc. across the whole document easily.
Maybe you know this, but LyX is somewhere in the middle.
You can see roughly what you are doing while writing, which makes some things much easier. Especially typing in large formulae (and double-checking that you didn't make a mistake). Although the way you enter them is more typing than point-and-clicking.
For something like changing how the chapter titles look, you are pretty much back in the world of Latex, trying out some macro to change all of them.
See a marginally relevant xkcd here: https://xkcd.com/2109/