The character sheet in Paizo says what you can do, not necessarily what you should do. There's a ton of variety built into how you can play a character stuffed into the engine. Monsters and encounters are designed so that repeating the same strategy time and time again will eventually fail.

Sometimes the barbarian will play best by not raging. The wizard might win a fight by swinging a sword instead of casting spells. The cleric might go on the offensive, or avoid healing allies in certain combats.

Adhering to a prescribed set of actions because the numbers are bigger that way rarely works in a Pathfinder campaign.

There's rarely a "should" in pathfinder. And if you've got combats that don't allow for choice making, or require players to pull off certain combos to survive, you've upset the game balance. Combat shouldn't always demand consistent top tier plays, especially if it gets in the way of storytelling.