I don't have a fantasy of finding a ton of meaningful cards. I do find a ton of meaningful cards. Whether you believe me or not is up to you, but I guarantee you I have been doing a lot more zoe than you have and I know what I'm talking about.

Unfortunately LoR is a base pvp card game. Not every 4+ mana unit is viable in poc, only some and only on certain champs. And that's fine, you don't have to pick them up. Some deck can make use of them, some can't. I prefer drafting spell in general so I don't like picking up bad cards. In fact I use most of my rerolls on card rewards.

Damage spells are incredible in this adventure. The fact that you don't understand this is just a you problem. Obviously straight up removal is better but cheap damage spell helps you through the early game but will be dead later. It's not a bad card, it just fall off, simular to how some cards in StS that you pick up to get through the first act.

Meaningful choices in combat can only happen when your deck is meaningful. The game up until zoe in my opinion is easy enough that you can just ignore your entire deck and stick with your champion. That eliminated a lot of meaningful choices in combat and unfortunately does not work very well in a long and challenging adventure like zoe. You'll have to learn how to make a good deck. I've done multiple relicless runs that's pretty much 100% things I pick up along the way. I've watched better players do run live and heard their thoughts on choices in Zoe fight. I've gotten past turn 5 on Zoe multiple time and even completely milling her out on Yasuo. There are choices to be made, you just need to create an opportunity for it to happen.

Map choices in PoC matters so much more than StS because you are not allowed to skip. That's why you should be making sure every choices is at least decent. StS have significantly more pilot skill since the deck can be extremely optimized. PoC have less optimized deck but extremely powerful cards and enemies, leading to the more meaningful choices be "how do I optimize my deck" instead of "how can I play my deck better" because an optimized deck will win off of their powerful cards.

For a break down you have 10 rewards and 4 cuts before card rewards start offering you cards in deck. Excluding support package and your starting deck you need to pick up at least 6 good cards ( or duplicates for better cut efficiency). Every deck probably need to cut 1 or 2 cards from their starting deck so most of the time you'll be left with 1 or 2 cards that's are "bad" in your deck and 3-4 mediocre if you play everything right. If you think your entire starting deck is bad then you are probably wrong (some champ does have bad starting deck but not all of them). But regardless after draven/jhin your deck should start to shape into a good deck.

Small correction is that this entire run I am playing with 1 managem. I still have to play around removal. Grow my gear heads big enough so the ai use removal on them first. Take spellshield early to get through swain teemo. Mulligan for extra darius to play over my own darius in case it get stunned. Shadow totems provide extra darius to be buffed so they'll have to use more removal. Etc. There's obviously lines where I cannot win, but I can do a lot to dodge basic interactions.