Try pressing `S` in `tig`. Works like magit but is much faster(when I say faster I'm also including interface lag). I realize that you won't switch, nor do you need to, but the general things people suggest of why magit is superior exist elsewhere as well.

Thanks for the tip, I haven't tried tig yet. That might actually be useful on remote systems in situations where I don't have access to my personally configured emacs.

Why just not use TRAMP to use your personal emacs to edit files on remote systems?

I actually use the git-gutter.el package alongside magit to do the arbitrary region work, and find it to fill the last gap between magit and the built-in version control commands.