I would argue that reasoning about promise chains are difficult enough to where an abstraction is desirable.

If you asked me to identify the most maintainable and easy to read of these two pieces of code, I would say the answer is easy.

Promises:

  const p1, p2 = undefined;

  somePromise()
    .then((res) => {
      p1 = somePromise(res);
      return anotherPromiseFuncThatNeedsP1(p1);
    })
    .then((anotherPromiseRes) => {
      p2 = anotherPromiseRes;
      return p2;
    })
    .catch(e => {
      // log, throw etc. 
    });
  // done

vs

try/catch:

  try {
    const p1 = await somePromise();
    const p2 = await anotherPromiseFuncThatNeedsP1(p1);
    // done
  } catch(e) {
    // log, throw, etc.
  }