Not so sure about that.
It wasn't Holmgang cheese that made the game "unfun".
It's just that at some point it became stale, Holmgang just allowed more invuln cheese.

It's not very fun to kitchen sink your CDs on tank busters.
P8S is mostly about that, every tank buster must be kitchen sink except the last one.

WAR still remains strong defensively and PLD remains the tank with the worst defensives.