[BigTTYGothGF]

> creating a branch starting at the problematic commit

Code always lives in a context, and when you're fixing a problem that exists in top-of-main the context of the fix needs to be top-of-main, not some commit way back in history. Also if you do it that way, you'd better hope that no later commit also touches that same line.

> I then get people coming to me and complaining they can't merge

A team needs to agree on git practice in advance, and not have one wildcard go off and do their own thing.

[bonzini]

It depends on how much the code has changed, how easy it is to test old releases, how far back you need to merge the fix... "Cherry picking from the top of tree" is the most common workflow but git itself uses "merge the same topic branch in all trees".