Um, no. RDM was the most efficient healer for merit parties for way more reasons than that. Hell, you're talking about mages (plural) when for the vast majority of the time, RDM and BRD could handle the demands of merits parties quite easily. Apart from that RDM was heavily desired in end game because of the excellent support and unique enfeebles it brought to the table. I feel like i'm repeating myself now though.In short, the reason people wanted RDM so much was because they were desperate for anyone with cures (see: SMN/WHM) and because mages were addicted to Refresh and Ballad as if it were crack. That's called inflating the value of a job through a gimmick. A bad one a that. It's what is known as bad design.
It's also downright scary that you'd go so far as to call mages 'addicted to refresh and ballad like crack'. Do you know why refresh and ballad were so popular? Because they improve the utility of jobs with MP quite heavily. They enabled us to do things which werent possible with more limited MP. You wanted to kill something hard in this game? RDM was just about essential (and for far more reasons than refresh, even though it does play a big part).
Refresh (and refresh II) are an incredible asset, hardly gimmicks. Once again, If you don't like applying the assets that your job brings to the table or find them tedious or boring, maybe level something else?