I think that depends what difficulty you play on. If you start on Expert it’s definitely not easy to improvise your way through and you definitely need to gear and build to some extent rather than just spamming a skill like on Normal.
Personally I consider levelling part of the journey and value gameplay over progress so I play the hardest difficulty that doesn’t feel like a slog. Not that I’m skilled or good at the game, I just don’t enjoy easy combat.