Are strength builds easier than bleed builds? I feel lied to

Elden Ring was my first Souls game, so when I first started playing I start googling which starting class I should pick/how the skills worked. I kept seeing the same thing, people memeing on bleed as being super easy mode, and strength being the "fair but challenging way to play".

So I went in mostly blind, playing a strength/faith build (mostly strength), and didn't use any summons. I struggled a lot, but managed to beat the game was proud of myself and didn't play for a while. I just picked it back up, and decided to do a dex/arc bleed build. I was expecting this to be almost a "victory lap" on all the bosses given how memed it was... well I'm halfway through and it has been anything but easy.

Half the bosses are highly resistant to bleed damage, and the other half are straight up immune to bleed. I can beat mobs pretty easy but that was never hard with my strength build either.

With my strength build I found I could poise break most bosses super easy, sometimes I'd charge in with a jumping R2 while they were mid swing because I knew it was going to stance-break them - and it worked incredibly effectively. I struggle to poise break with bleed, I find myself tailoring my weapon affinity and talismans to fights and it still barely helps, which I never felt I had to do with strength.

Three enemies that stand out to me so far are: Rennala, Radahn, and Crucible Knights. I was roughly the same level fighting these enemies with both my bleed and strength builds.

Rennala I killed on my first try with my strength build, I thought she was just meant to be an easy boss. Took me 4 tries with bleed, not being able to stagger meant she could actually fight back.

Radahn too, I heard everyone be like "bro he's so hard" but killed him after like 5 tries with a Strength build. Took me close to 20 with bleed, he just kept absolutely destroying me.

Crucible Knights - I never bothered parrying these with my strength build, I just dodged their attacks and eventually I'd poise break them with my attacks. With bleed? I had to just give up and equip a buckler to parry-cheese them to death, I could not beat them any other way.

Am I missing something? It goes against the mantra I always hear but to me it seems like I need way more skill to beat the game with bleed, with strength I could just "jump R2" literally anything.