Shuttle was heavy rocket. Decent in quite a few metrics.
Also the arguments about not having heavy rockets has nothing to do with engines, it's either "we don't need them" or "just use propellant depots". Without certain Alabama senator even SLS would be probably dead already. Big rockets are only useful when you sacrifice performance for reuse AND have enough payloads to maintain good flightrate.
It's true that in the end we may get there the long way, N1-style, but we still didn't.