What advantages does Features offer in deploying changes
You seem to have mentioned the use-case of Features only as a configuration packer, probably with strongarm, or with structure - where you would not use the code once it is run and has made its changes in the database.

But one of the important uses of Features is ctools exportables, such as Views, rules, etc... Here, the settings are much more complex than '103 configuration options' and if you are dealing with multiple developers, a staging site and then production, you can't imagine doing all of this manually on all different servers and instances.