I use plate solving in APT, have done for a looong time. It works well, no nonsense, has some neat features once you've solved an image like "centre here"
There a multitude of reasons why go to accuracy may be off even with good polar alignment, such as the clock being slightly out when off-grid at a dark site, lat/long coordinates being less than accurate...
And then there's the scenario (like in my first point above) where you might want to shift your field away from the catalog coordinates (which are not always 100% accurate IMO). Then of course you can bookmark the field you solve and go right back there after a meridian flip or the next night. Or 12 months later...without having to crop hundreds of pixels off the edge during stacking. Al the more important when imaging with a small chip.
Sure, plate solving certainly isn't essential, but it sure saves wasting a lot of imaging time to centre the field you want on your sensor!