dns level blocking doesn't work nearly as well as ublock. Not sure what newpipe is (checking it out now), but pihole misses a ton of things that ublock can do. Ublock can also hide elements from things like "disable your ad blocker" messages that always pop up.
I'm definitely wanting to swap back to firefox, but idk who the hell decided to remove PWA support from FF... hopefully they bring that back.
Yeah DNS blocking it's not perfect but it works almost on all apps WO having to install anything in the OS, I'm using right now NextDNS+NewPipe(SponsorBlock)+ViMusic+Brave and everything it's going smooth AF. For services like Facebook and YouTube you need forcedly use a free front-end or a modded app.
This seems like more of an issue of the adlists you use in pihole. Pihole's blocking is only as good as the adlists you use on it. I've been running a pihole on my home network for years, and I find that as long as I take a few minutes to update the adlists (add new ones, remove dead ones) once or twice a year, it nukes nearly everything. And it's amazing for blocking things on IoT devices where ublock origin will never be a thing.
Also, they're not mutually exclusive -- one can certainly use both. I use pihole on my home network, and run ffox + UBO on my computers and phone.
+1 for DNS level ad/tracker blocking. Everyone should check out NextDNS or self host Pi-Hole.
You should still use Firefox or LibreWolf though. Mull is awesome on mobile, it's the closest thing to LibreWolf.
For YouTube, you can use alternative clients like Piped or Invidious in combination with LibRedirect to automatically redirect all YouTube links. On mobile, I recommend LibreTube for Android, Yattee with this guide on iOS and SmartTubeNext on Android TV.