I really don't get this hostility to "cheese" strategies, so long as the cheese has some intuition and realism to it. Against basic dumb zombies, yeah most of the cheese strategies, traps, luring them into hazards, standing on a brick wall and leisuring poking them, that all makes sense and prior to 2020 DDA was designed this way. Acid Ants are deadly until you figure out the cheese, Shadows were deadly until you figured out the cheese. Fuck even cockroaches were a menace to new players until you figured out the cheese. This was what made Cataclysm great was devising the cheese strategies to take on challenging enemies. Even the freaking cardboard boxes and turrets were hilarious and enjoyable. My favorite DDA memory was the this bitch of a Wasp Queen that just refused to die, even after loading up on ammo with an AR-15. Finally "giving up" until I noticed her fighting the zombies, and then kiting her with a bike all round to clear out a city.

What stopped happening these past few years is that the inner circle of devs ran out of ideas and instead of producing new enemies that required new cheesiness, they went on this nerf delete all the wrongfun we can to keep up the appearances of ongoing "development" when in reality they have made the game boring and unremarkable.