[Drew_]

If DOM manipulation is rarely needed then your web app isn't complex, it's at most a collection of CRUD pages. UI Frameworks like React are for building UI's that accomplish a lot more than that through frequent DOM manipulation. If all you need is CRUD then templating frameworks still exist, are well maintained, and widely in use.

[mosdl]

Even in complex apps, most of the DOM remains the same and you are changing several properties (some text, changing some classes).

[spiralx]

That's not true as soon as your UI contains conditional logic or a list of elements, at least one of which will be present in almost every web application.