Combat balancing isn't a huge issue to me in Elden Ring. I love most games in this series, but aside from Sekiro I don't think the actual combat mechanics are all that great. Certainly not a scratch on Monster Hunter for instance, so the combat feeling a little off in terms of numbers doesn't really affect my enjoyment that much in the long run (as long as the animations and hit feedback are enjoyable, which they are in ER). The strength of Soulsbornekiroing (my apologies) combat imo is how seamlessly integrated it is into exploration. It feels like old school Castlevania or Zelda combat where you can flow from exploration, to fighting enemies, and then back to exploration at the drop of a hat without the game making a big deal about it, locking you arbitrarily into an arena, etc.
I mostly come to these games for their level design, environments, sense of exploration, and atmosphere - things they all do much far better than games that I would consider to have better combat. Elden Ring nails all of these at an absurd level for me with one of the most fascinatingly constructed worlds I've ever seen, secrets around every corner, heartbreakingly beautiful vistas at every turn, and maybe the grandest sense of raw ass adventure a game has ever given me.
Elden Ring's most transparent attempt at limiting the player's power is probably the smithing stone system. As long as you don't explore outside of a given boss' region, you simply won't find the smithing stones of the required level to upgrade your weapon to a point where your damage completely destroys them. You can pump stats all day, but it generally takes a lot of upgrades to make your weapon's scaling actually increase the damage by a significant amount purely based on stats. But obviously you can still end up with an absurd amount of health, and this doesn't really apply to magic where scaling isn't as limited by weapon upgrade level.
Ashes also feel pretty intended. You can tell they put a ton of work into how boss aggro works and how quickly and fluidly they can switch targets before attacking or while mid-combo. This isn't always the best balanced *glares at mimic* but I really don't think your meant to ignore the mechanic. Even with mimic, it took me several tries to beat a couple of the late game bosses because all it takes to kill you is an aggro switch and two mistimed rolls to get two-shotted.
