I think part of it too is that the pace of combat is much faster today.
In Classic, white hits were the bulk of your damage, and there were several times for many classes where you have GCDs of nothing, waiting on a resource, a skill to be available, whatever.
Today, everything seems just faster paced and sequentially structured via rotations.

But I will say, animations and sounds, paired with a good numbers visual, is what made things "impactful" in the past.
Like, when rogue got Death From Above, I used it even when it wasn't ideal because I liked the animation, felt fun to jump in the air.
Animations have been made somewhat higher quality in terms of pixels and fluidity, with spells getting more sprites and being all flashy, but they feel very "meh" at the end because they don't really stand out.
It's especially bad during lust, where some animations are just getting cut short because of how fast the game plays.

Slowing down pace of play, ramping up animations to near-cartoony levels (this is a fictional world of magic and elves and shit), and letting animations, sounds, and more importantly, those juicy crits, mean something would help make it feel more like combat and less like whack-a-mole.
Make a pyroblast like a fuckin kamehameha, because that shit *should* look crazy and hit like a truck.