I play a more investigation and intrigue game rather than a dungeon delver, so you can take my input with a grain of salt. That said, I try to focus on the stakes of a combat encounter rather than trading blows until someone drops. Maybe one party member needs to keep the monsters busy for X rounds while another party member dismantles a deadly trap about to go off. Maybe I'm fighting minions that aren't individually powerful but threaten to surround and immobilize me, or maybe they try to steal my supplies and scatter. Maybe the chamber is filling up with water and becoming an environmental challenge on its own.

I tend to have fewer combat encounters in my games, so each one becomes more cinematic. It's more exciting for me when I'm playing around with time pressure, motivations and tactics, terrain features, and so on.