So to answer all and make this more clear: I definitely understand the concept of the truss rod, but the neck seemed to be a bit too bowed and I wanted it to be as flat as I could get it. I'm not crazy about a little relief even thought it's suggested. What I did was take the fretboard up to it's flattest without ever going "OVER" or have a negative convex bow that bows outward towards the strings in the middle frets. It was literally just flat and maybe even a hair bowed as it should be. When I did that, the high E side was practically slapping the frets, but the bass side was absolutely perfect to me playability and sound-wise still.
I obviously wasn't going to leave it that way, so I restored the relief to the point where the high E was giving me pure, nice, whole notes again even as I bent up the first few frets to test it, the note sustained as it should. So I'm back to square one, but as I look down the bass side of the neck, the relief STILL looks a little too intense and I can visibly see the action is WAY too high on the bass/LOW E side. I don't have a micrometer, but I'd say the bass side is easily 2-3 millimeters off the fretboard. I'm clearly having to push down WAY too much to achieve a note. I understand the whole concept of leaving room for the Low E to vibrate so as not to buzz too much, but I completely agree with one of the commenters that if you are playing a guitar properly, it's not going to do that. I'm not hammering away on this thing, I definitely play with touch and articulation and I feel like I have to really push harder than I should be.
If it's a saddle adjustment, this bothers me because if the neck is where Taylor says it should be, I'm still getting far too high action on the bass side. It looks to me like I need I new nut when I site it down the fretboard because the radius is perfectly balanced, but the saddle is not. On my Martin, the compensated saddle follows the curve of the fretboard. It sounds beautiful, the action is perfect and it plays so easily. Not a problem at all there.
This Taylor is a 2007, so clearly some humidity may have affected it over winter, but this still doesn't seem to be the problem that I am having. I have no 12th fret hump from it being too dry and I straight-edged the top and back and it has proper shape and seems perfectly fine. It bums me out that this is the guitar that used to play even better than the Martin, after all, that's what a Taylor is known for and it's the same exact saddle I had in there to begin with. It should still work fine with my guitar?