Yes it's like your climbing example. Tactics give you the biggest boost, but at some point your weak openings and positional weakness will leave you out of tactical chances.
Ben Finegold said recently that you will never beat him exchanging pieces. You have to play some subtle move that 10 moves later ends up giving you a positional advantage.
How long have you been studying? For me it was 3 months before I started to see my games benefit from tactics training, in that I felt I was starting to calculate and visualise out of habit. I see you joined in December, give it time. My experience was puzzles improved my board vision, so I then became for confident with pieces, this lead to better activity and dynamic play and my rating improved. So puzzles help build skills that then improve other areas of play.
So I took everyone's advise: you are a new player with a beginner rating, do tactics. tactics, tactics, tactics. I have been doing them everyday, around 15 puzzles which take around 30 minutes. I have been doing this alongside 30 minutes of endgames and a game and analysis in the evening. But my tactics rating seems to have stalled. I am just not getting better.
Is it possible I am not getting better at tactics because there is some other aspect of chess that I am not understanding? My rapid rating seems to have stagnated as well.
I used to do climbing and I know you can do all the strength training in the world but at a certain point if you lack flexibility, technique, you won't improve more regardless of how much extra strength training you do. I don't know if that is a good metaphor.
Point is I feel like tactics whilst good to keep doing isn't really getting me any further at them moment and that maybe there is another aspect of chess I could focus on alongside tactics to improve.
Thanks