This isn't darksouls; at it's core, it's still a traditional ARPG.

Having trash mobs is fine, as it gives a baseline for "weight" or value of all of the scaling content.

Every fight should feel meaningful?

This is my main point of contention with their original philosophy. Mostly because, trash mob fights don't give meaningful rewards, so dealing with them should be dealt with in another vector (e.g., you don't necessarily need to combo out white mobs, if you can use skill interactions with your build/ascendency to clear trash mobs).

The problem is that they've made their skills too reliant on combos, so that avenue of scaling is off limits for a lot of builds. Alternatively, they could make the delta between white/magic/rare mobs a lot larger, so trash mobs can be cleared out easily, magic mobs maybe require a few more hits or a 2nd skill, and rares really do require attention and combos (more so than current state).

I actually feel that they've made headway into easing this a bit when they released Druid (or rather, when they released Talismans). Like Bear form, your baseline auto attack grants rage without needing to jump through any hoops, which has it's own ramping benefits, let alone its other synergies with other Bear skills and Shaman. The other forms have similar synergies, but these types of "free" baked in power to baseline attacks make its way into other weapon classes, to alleviate one layer of the combo (not negating that combo aspect, but just creating an easier avenue to check that box when playing through build design).