It helps to know the history of Direct Hit.

Direct Hit used to be called Accuracy. In the past, there was not a 100% chance to land a hit. If you did not land a hit successfully, then your combo did not continue and obviously your damage took a big hit as a result.

You would stack Accuracy to reach 100% Accuracy so that you never miss. This was basically regarded as essential for raiding. But you know, it sucks to miss and felt like "why". Why does the default make you miss and make the game unplayable?

So they tried to do Accuracy in a different way, where the default experience doesn't ruin your ability to execute combos and things like that. That is how Direct Hit was born.

The idea of Direct Hit is that while the default experience is fine, if you stack it, then your hits can be more accurate (aka more direct), which they achieved by making it similar to crit.

But that created the obvious comparisons to crit and how it was almost the same on a fundamental level. I can see both perspectives of it, but I also don't see a lot of alternatives that aren't just the same thing.

Even in other games that have done lots of stats, they often end up more or less the same and you're choosing between things that amount to the same result: increasing damage, or making you take less damage.