Why are Ranged DPS so unfun to play?

[Shurrikhan]

Utility is literally anything that buffs the party. [/B]

Personal mobility tools? No utility to be had, despite situationally varied rDPS value, because it doesn't affect allies.
Having higher burst than any other job, thus better capitalizing on externally granted damage buffs? Not utility, because it doesn't target or spread to allies.

Let's say Adloquiem gains an effect that stores 50% of HP healed as damage to be dealt upon the allies' next attack. Because it's raw value, not potency, it doesn't scale with the recipient's gear or traits instead of yours. Because the value is snapshotted immediately, it cannot scale with the opponent's buffs instead of yours.

It would literally just be an additional half a Broil in damage, wasted if the fight ends before the target's next attack. Yet, by your reckoning, that would still be utility, because it's an effect that occurs through the ally, even if at virtually no dependence on or variance because of that ally, rather than SCH's utility there being that their nuke GCD heal refunds 150 potency (roughly half a filler GCD). (Hell, technically, Adloquiem itself would be utility already, as it generates a buff on the target.)

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At this point we're arguing semantics, but to my mind, if the "utility" does nothing that simply adding filler potency would do to identical effect across a majority of situations, it's not utility. To utility, it must have something to how it works, relative to more normal ways of granting equivalent rDPS, that causes its value to vary in different situations beyond merely teammate (in)competence (since any personal effect was already 100% dependent on competence -- your own).

Otherwise, it's just damage. Given ilvl equal to party average, having Battle Voice, for instance, behaves almost identically to additional Burst Shot potency. Both have their benefits potentially delayed by lengthy incoming downtime (Burst Shot's buff being wasted as you refresh DoTs instead, if necessary). Both are just as dependent on alignment and player competency. That doesn't mean I'd prefer for Battle Voice to be gone, but its effect is solely to...

• move raw damage from your kit to that of others, only to be moved right back again on FFLogs,
• move that portion of damage from depending on your gear and competency to that of your 3-7 party members,
• reduce Bard's relative power in parties of fewer than 7 players, and
• faintly increase party punishment for any deaths, especially yours.

It offers no affordances, no advantages over a simple buff to filler potency. Unless things go poorly, at which point it comparatively underperforms, it scales no differently than added filler potency. It grants no further use, nor way to be used.
At that point, is that "utility," or simply a constraint?

Having Refresh available will make it so that the devs can add more mechanics that involve Refresh, just like how tank cooldowns are essentially made for tankbusters

Like what, though?

So, you've got your shiny CD here by which to counter mechanic X.

It also happens to have an effect identical to Lucid Dreaming, except halved over time (split two-ways / at half the frequency), such that for it to have any impact outside of the very worst of situations, Lucid Dreaming must now be insufficient, and the healer's ability to use AoEs/Rez/GCDs --i.e., to use their full kit-- purposely made dependent on having one or more Physical Ranged.

This, in turn, would turn SpS from being a BiS stat up to a certain GCD threshold and Piety a waste stat in general to now either that... or the exact opposite... turning all healer optimization on its head the moment one speedruns or goes without a Physical Ranged to again having one.

And what does that mechanic look like? Just saps partywide MP? Introduces healing checks well beyond the level of DSR (which can nonetheless be solo-healed with a majority of casts being spent on Malefic), in hopes of draining healer MP throug AoE spam, despite the devs repeated insistence that they will not be increasing relative healing requirements?

No you hold it for heavy heal checks that the new fights

But, again, like what?

You can solo-heal every fight in this game even without Refresh / bonus MP.

the devs will be able to have the freedom to force the healers to go OOM

But the low modern healing requirements aren't simply a result of healers not having access to Refresh. It was a purposeful design decision, for better or (imo) worse, to make healing 'more accessible'. You will no more be able to try to force healers to go oom without a Bard under your suggested change than to force them to very low MP in a typical fight right now.

Like, just do anything to change up that effect as not to be flat total MP restoration, over time, on CD and you'd be more nearly able to do what you want, but the Stormblood design for MP restoration --free and therefore largely impotent and inflexible-- is not it.

But even then, you have to deal with the fact that you cannot use Refresh to uniquely counter anything, and having it actually be important means holding hostage healers' ability to even use their kit (that is, beyond rez, which other jobs would be able to cover better than your MP bonuses ever could). That's not going to work out well in a design paradigm specifically looking to minimize healing requirements and the tax of DPS-Rezzes is flat and therefore kept miniscule. You'd probably have to readjust how MP itself works for this to work out. You cannot simply draw from a very differently designed era and attempt to plunk its value into modern XIV. (Not that Refresh would actually offer any gameplay to Physical Ranged jobs even then, only hold Healers' hostage in certain cases.)

If there's no tankbusters in raid, then you're gonna go ahead and press intervention on cooldown to mitigate auto attacks, and you'll be saying the same thing for Intervention as you are saying right now with Refresh.

P.S. Intervention has an opportunity cost, just as Physical Ranged jobs' previous ways of granting MP did. Unless incoming damage would be more than 30% auto-crits, you'd be better off Provoking and using Shelltron. It is an otherwise less efficient option used when it has the most reason to be used (as per ARR/HW Ballad/Promotion), rather than a flat value over time (as per Stormblood Refresh).