Burning someone up with fire is fine and all, but smashing someone's knee out then chopping at their neck is a lot more satisfying.
Some spells send people flying. I don't find that as intense as the bloody chopping and slicing with melee weapons or delivering arrows into a head.

Yeah, but when I see the same executions for 100 times, I kind of get a little bored of them. So when I switched to a Firebolt and one-shotted a wolf with it, it was pretty satisfying.
And when I killed some bandits with Sparks, it also felt satisfying.