I've long given up on expecting balanced Tour routes. The ASO probably consider this route a humoungous success.
This is the inevitable problem - because the end is spectacular, the whole shebang that led to this is forgotten about and the lesson learned is either nothing at all or the wrong one.
The 2011 Tour and 2012 Vuelta are, as a result, two of the most damaging Grand Tours in recent history. 2011 because the spectacular final week meant people forgot how tedious the first two weeks were, and because a short mountain stage was a success, they decided that they had to have short mountain stages every year not as part of a balanced diet of different types of mountain stage, but as a substitute for well designed ones. The 2012 Vuelta was one of the worst designed GTs of all time, but a fortunate set of circumstances led to the perfect storm for it, with the Tour being so TT-biased Purito targeted Giro-Vuelta that year, Froome having unfinished business (had he won in 2011 originally, he mightn't have returned), Contador's weirdly timed ban meant the Vuelta was his only realistic target that year, you had three of the most popular Spanish riders all at the peaks of their powers on a race heavily balanced toward their skillset, and the race was a success, was hailed as one of the greatest Vueltas ever, and so that template has been copied over and over by the race since.