Why are Ranged DPS so unfun to play?

[Payotz]

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.

That's right. Yeah.
A job can be brought for high personal dps with 0 utility (SAM/BLM), low dps overall, but very high utility (PLD), lower dps but for very specific utility (RDM/SMN/SCH/SGE), or for high burst, and high utility without having great sustained damage (NIN). A job can literally be just brought because you're comfortable with it really. It doesn't change the fact that Mug/Battle Litany/Expedient/Divine Benison/Passage of Arms are all utility.

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.)

Yeah that would be utility as well. That's correct. It's going to be as unweildly as your En Avant suggestion, and nobody would actually use it as seriously as other options, but yes that would also be utility. You're right. Utility is utility, even if it is bad utility, good utility or even unsusable utility (like Arm Graze and Head Graze).

I don't know why we're arguing semantics when it turns out that you do understand what I'm getting at. Utility is utility. It's stuff that makes the party burst more during their burst phases or during tight dps checks where you have to dump 3mil damage in total in under 60 seconds, it's mitigation where it stops you from being insta killed from full hp by an 80k raidwide, and it's movement speed buffs wherein it makes it easier to do a mechanic or position for a mechanic.

Whether or not it's bad utility, it's good utility, it's boring utility, it's engaging utility doesn't change the fact that it's all utility.

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)

It allows you to pump out as much damage as you can during intermissions where you have limited uptime (like all Thordin Phase in DSR). Yes that's utility.
It allows you to complete a tight dps check that you need in phases, like DSR Rewind, yes that's utility.
It allows you to have a higher chance of Direct Hitting in the 30 seconds window of you having higher main stat because of pots, yes that's utility.

It helps the party, that's why it's utility.

Like what, though?

Mechanics like BJ enrage, E12s enrage, E11's bleed after a raid wide, Nisi, a more damaging Mortal Vow, and literally Tumults back in E4S (our healers went OOM during prog for this one, so this is a really good one.)
A mechanic that applies more dot damage every raid wide, forcing the healers to gcd heal more than usual.
More outgoing raidwide damage that goes out constantly rather than every 30 seconds.

Hell, WoW's bursting affix in M+. Anduin's healer bubble check in Sepulcher. Even Grievous as an affix.

There's a lot of mechanics that's already there in FF14 that just needs to be either tuned higher or come out faster one after the other, and there are mechanics from their competitors that I believe is more than possible in FF14's fight design. More inconsistent damage coming out that doesn't give a fuck about your OGCD cooldowns would force healers to GCD more, because they simply have no more OGCDs left to spend after a while.

And even then, with only few more tune ups to the current fight design, Refresh still has a place as a recovery tool.
Rezzing as an RDM is not free mana, nor does mana actually come back when healers die.

Lucid Dreaming doesn't have a short cooldown, so in niche situations where they have no lucid dreaming AND the healers needs mana to GCD heal, Refresh has a place.
Hell, even if Lucid Dreaming is off cooldown and they used it, SE can make it so that Refresh stacks with Lucid Dreaming to have more mana available faster.

There's a lot of situations I can think of that Refresh is useful, but it just seems like you're hell bent into denying all of my situations as being feasible.

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.

Yes because the fight design is tuned with the existence of Ranged Physicals in mind. Ranged Physicals are already obligatory in content now anyway, might as well have their reason being there not just be the 1%, but also the utility they give. Refresh is a part of that utility yes.

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...

No, because the only reason why SpS isn't maxed out is because faster GCDs will mean that your natural mp regen and lucid dreaming can't actually keep up with the amount of Glares you're going to do.
So really, Refresh will just make it so that higher SpS will actually be viable, with extra Piety staying the same "prog stat" as always.
You've always run minimum Piety as a healer when you're not progging anyway, so yes Piety, in an optimized run, is a wasted stat, even today.

turning all healer optimization on its head the moment one speedruns or goes without a Physical Ranged to again having one.

All speedrun groups already need a Physical Ranged because of that 1% party dps buff.
This won't change. Hell, you're already obligated to run a Physical Ranged, it's just the main reason why you wanna run one is because you give more dps to the party by merely existing. No raid buffs, no buttons to press, you don't even need to be alive to actually give the 1% buff.

You're already obligated to bring a Physical Ranged, might as well be obligated to get a Physical Ranged because of that AND its utility, re-establishing the Physical Ranged role as the utility dps.

I feel like we're running around in circles at this point.

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?

There's a big misconception in the community that big party busters are actually heal checks. They're not. They're really just mitigation checks.
There's really very few heal checks in this game that actually makes the healers heal.

Akh Morn in P7, E12S enrage, and E4S Tumults come to mind as the only actual true heal checks in this game.
Most "heal checks" in this game are literally just "oh did you mitigate this? Oh no? Then you die."

The problem with the implementation of true heal checks in this game is that it's literally lined up with your cooldowns going off cooldown.
They're spaced perfectly apart from one another that you already have full mana, full OGCDs and cooldowns, and ready for the next true heal check.

You want more healing in this game? Bring those moments of heal checks closer. That's it.

If you Akh morn one after the other, then eventually you'll have even your AST go OOM, necessiating a Refresh.

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.

In a world where healers are demanding more healing, that's all going to change. You already have a guaranteed Refresh cause you'll have a Ranged Physical in every party.
Just like how tanks need extra cooldowns to stay alive for tankbusters, just like how the party needs shields from a shield healer to survive a party buster, just like how the party needs a Melee to Melee LB3 the boss for maximum damage.
You're already obligated to take a Ranged Physical because of an uncontrollabe 1% buff, just like you're obligated to get one melee, one caster, one healer and one tank because they all give a 1% dps buff. The only difference with Ranged Physicals is that Healers, Tanks, Melee and Casters bring more to the table, and Ranged Physicals don't.

Utility like Refresh, will be that extra something that Ranged Physicals can bring to the table, cementing their identity as Utility DPS.

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 you're talking about something like Heavensward Cleric Stance, Accuracy and even Positionals not giving buffs if not followed, I would agree, but we're talking about Refresh, which is the same as a Combat Peloton, Palisade, Divine Benison, Shake it Off and current Tactician. I can definitely see Refresh fitting in with little to no resistance and needing only a few adjustments in fight design. Hell, kiting adds and CCing them is from ARR, literally all the way back to the first version of the game, and it can stil fit in the game now with some adjustments. That's just not a valid excuse to not reimplement Refresh in modern FFXIV.