The myth that POE doesn't have meaningful combat

How many people have killed Uber Maven in SSF? I can bet its less than 5000 in a league.

POE 1 has spurts of meaningful combat.

The first few days, even Uber Elder and Maven are challenging fights for the watchstones (I know you can buy carries but I am talking about average players that dont use TFT etc).

4 ways and Cortex and Sirus are all difficult fights early on in the league when you don't have decked out gear or not playing a super broken build.

I know a bunch people just ignore the feared map slot as that fight is just too hard for most league start characters.

All of these are few examples of meaningful combat in the first week of the league. There is also your occaisional soul eater mob or an essence mob that will wreck you. And then you have t17's, again most people don't even get to these on their league start chars.

ARPG's are all about mowing down hordes of monsters with occasional pauses for hard fights. I feel like that is one of the most important tennets of the genre. It was the same in D2.

However when POE 2 released everybody and their mother was like oh I want meaningful combat, poe is too fast and easy blah blah blah (most of these people have never done ubers in trade, forget ssf or hardcore). All of these folks most probably play the most meta shit and buy carries, there is nothing wrong with that, but why do that and complain about no meaningful combat?

Just had to rant after hearing Jonathan go on and on about meaningful combat BS in every single POE 2 video and all the sheep agreeing with him.