The trick is to use liveview for data that needs to come from the server anyway. I'd guess that the OP did use it for everything, like popups etc and did not do the same with hotwire.
That's what hotwire gives you: an opinionated approach and a golden path to do things in a manageable way.
Seriously? This has to be a joke.
You don't really need to use alpine either if you use Phoenix with Liveview, you can probably get away with just using vanilla js if all you really need is some small functionality of modals popping up etc.