Isometric ARPG with "meaningful combat" exists. It's called Hades.

And in that game mostly fight a few enemies on screen at once. There's no bumrushing 50 vs 1 and body blocking you from all directions. The game offers possibilities to execute the "skillful play".

POE 2 is not Hades. It's not Hades 2 either. Let it just be Path of Exile we know and like. There's nothing wrong with erasing a screen of mobs with 1 skill, and rares & uniques with 2 skills (you add a curse to shred some resistances). Trying to implement "skillful play" with multiple skills resulted in possibly the worst patch you ever released and the worst player reception you ever got. 36% positive reviews on Steam in last 30 days is pretty bad.

How did we get here? I remember when POE II was supposed to be the biggest "patch" or "expansion" to POE I ever released. Not this fork that went in a very different direction.

Since when is Hades ARPG? And why is it in PoE2 builds forum?

This isn't a build

Hades is sort of an arpg but I think it's more focused on rogue lite elements. Because you know you don't do a real build you do a bunch of small unplanned unoptimized builds

But even if your random example made sense, I'm unclear what it has to do with your point... That point being that you like poe1 more than poe2.

Btw, that's cool. You should play poe1 and have a blast. I far prefer poe2 so I really hope they don't turn it into poe1.

But this still isn't a build.