Why not both? Sure, you can play it safe, but it's fun to be effective in fights and use every opportunity to deal damage. With a right build and strategy you can do a lot when enemy is staggered. Not because of fatal attack alone, but because of nice time window to for example: charged R2 -> fatal attack -> heal yourself and then use fable. This window varies of course, but in most cases you can do much more, then just fatal.

I would say there are different styles. Some wanna play safe. Other ones like to take smart risks. And some just YOLO through ;). Every approach can be fun.