So, about buffs over all in FF14

[Dzian]

Making them feel worthwhile wouldn't necessarily mean making them unable to stack. You could simply reduce there usage by default.
Stronger buffs with longer cooldowns. Make something like trick attack a 25% damage boost but put it on a 150-180 second cooldown for example. Which would in turn make it feel that much more powerful to use.

The tiny incremental increases in everything are I believe a big part of why so many people flat out ignore buffs, food, materia melds and the like. They have literally no visually noticeable effect and as a result of that they feel incredibly weak and unsatisfying.
Why meld hundreds of points of Crit when all it results in is a tiny 1-2% increase in crit rate that you would never actually really notice. and if you did on occasion notice a small increase it could easily put it down to luck.

It's the same with a lot of other skills that some players never seem to use. I see so many black mages never use ley lines because the difference in cast time isn't exactly massive. what is it .2 seconds??? or they move out of it for mechanics and never bother to go back because the increased cast speed isn't noticeable. Or so many players that never use finishers like Agatha or Assassinate because it's a button you might press once in a fight and it really doesn't do anything noticable...essentially its a wasted slot 99.9% of the time. Something that situational in use needs to pack some serious Ooomph!!

All of these things on the whole are probably core reasons why so many people think the gear, stats and combat are all so lack lustre...
How many people don't even look at stats for example. just equip the highest i level and completely ignore the rest because it really makes no noticable difference.