You do understand that mechanically challenging encounters are not the only way to design a difficult encounter, right? This isn’t your first mmo is it?
The other way is to do it with gear/stat checks, but GW2 is not designed with a steep gear progression in mind so that way falls away.
You are definitely missing something, fractals are way superior designed, imho they are on par with wildstars dungeon design (or comparable to some of the best wow 5 mans). The only thing i criticize is the bad loot compared to dungeons.