Setting white point in LR

I'm almost sure I'm missing something but I cannot find a solution. I'm using LR (currently 2.2) for quite a while (since 1.2) but I simply cannot find an easy, user friedly and predictable way how to set a white point of edited pictures.
In PS, CR, DPP and most other editing SW and RAW processors, there two typical easy tools how to set the white point.
1) a white point picker which (when used) defines a desired tone as white and the relevant SW then redistributes the tones accordingly;
2) in "levels" or "curves" dialog (or their equivalents it is possible to move the "White level" treshold below which the remaining tones are redistributed accordingly - the iterface varies (sometimes it is the border of the histogram or curve diagram that can be moved (DPP), sometimes it is the slider in histogram or curve diagram setting this limit
botw ways generally lead to the same and quite uniform result. I.e. I'm usually able to get almost identical result by setting white point in PS, DPP, CR, .... and other SW by such simple operation when working over identical picture data.
However in LR it is virtually impossible to achieve similar result in LR. No white point picker, no slider enabling setting the white limit, no chance to move borders in the histogram chart. The only available tools for this purpose are
"Exposure" and "Brightness". None of them providing for the desired functionality alone - their combination giving sometimes acceptable but hardly predictable results (definitely not as predictable as achieved e.g. in PS by simple and single move of white limit slider in "level" dialogue or equivalent step in CR.
Do I really miss something important (I hope so) in this respect or is LR completly lacking this (for me really core/basic) functionality present in all other photo and RAW editting SW I know - even from Adobe?
thanks

I agree with the original poster - I find it troublesome to set the white point in an image. In a situation where a traditional (PS, Aperture) levels control would make it convenient to push a particular tone to white, I find myself going back and forth between exposure and the tone curve a fair amount. Another description of what I want, effectively, is a 'recovery' slider that goes up as well as down.
(See end of post for replies to a few specific points.)
An example:
Here is the original image, with its histogram and tone curve - black to middle gray:
I want to push the small hatch/door to white, but that also overexposes my middle grays (I haven't yet touched the tone curve):
So now I go to the tone curve, and pull down both darks and lights:
However, at this point I've lost my whites (they are not quite clipped any more); and probably more importantly, since the tone curve is at the extreme low values, I have little working room or control.
Rather than working together or providing complementary functions, in this case exposure and the tone curve, to me, seem to be fighting; it requires back-and-forth to get the desired effect.
(To be clear, most of the time - that is, when my white point starts out more or less where I want it - being able to drag the histogram and smoothly-transitioned segments of the tone curve is brilliantly easy and useful. It's specifically the exposure control's nonlinear behavior/effect that I dislike, as it makes it difficult to adjust near-white tones.)
Responding to specifics:
> Also, hold the ALT key (David Edwards)
Cool! (However, not a fix for this issue.)
> the controls themselves are not linear (Lee Jay)
> attempts to preserve highlights (Lee Jay)
> the exposure slider is almost exactly equivalent to the white point slider in Photoshop's levels/curves (Joa V. L.)
I think this is the root of the issue, for me - the exposure control is being intelligent in a way to protect hilights, which is counter to my intent. My experience leads me to disagree strongly with Joa's comment (though I would be very happy to discover I was wrong) - my problem is specifically that adjusting exposure up (brightening the image with exposure) affects tones less, the brighter they are.
> I need to decrease the Brightness (Henry_Deer)
> you may need to generate a higher-contrast tone curve and work with that (Lee Jay)
The brightness adjustment seems analogous to my use of the tone curve, though it's an alternate approach I haven't tried. However, both seem to suffer from the 'several rounds' problem.
Edited to reply to a few specific points

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