You find a creative way to beat an encounter.
You do it once and it's really cool and rewarding.
You do it twice and it's still fun.
You do it three times and it's just another game mechanic.
That in my opinon is the most fundamental problem with Larians combat gimmicks. Every gimmick, when done over and over, becomes just another mechanic. Shoving someone off a cliff isn't creative anymore when you do it for the 27th time. It's just the way the game is played.
What I would like to see is specific fights having specific gimmicks. Getting a barrel in place and blowing up your enemies shouldn't happen all the time. It should only be possible for a small number of fights, so it feels special. Same with shoving someone off a cliff. Maybe that only works if they land in lava or deep water, which isn't found everywhere.
You can't have "a moment" every fight. If everything is special, nothing is. Less is more in this case.
This would also help to bridge the gap between DOS2 fans and 5e players.
Normal fight: Closer to 5e
Special fight: Closer to DOS2
The issue with that approach, is that it further removes the focus of the party members and their abilities being the determining factors of how combat is won, and moves it to "figuring out the gimmick for that battle", which is along the same lines of the current model which also shifts focus away from the characters, and centers combat around managing the environment, like DOS.
