Just to clarify, I'm pretty sure the dash is not there to be useful as a movement tool — it would be OGCD in that case.

It's literally just to imitate things that Ifrit does in his encounter.

Garuda creates whirlwinds, so you get Slipstream as her Favor. Titan is infamous for clapping the Tank's cheeks with untelegraphed tankbusters, hence the 1-2 punch of Titan Favor.

The Ifrit Favor is probably just there to try to allude to Ifrit's dashes from his Trial, and to add some texture / variety to the rhythm and pacing of what SMN is doing. I don't think Ifrit Favor dash is intended to actually be useful. In fact, being inconvenient and needing to be played around is probably intentional.

That said, I also agree with the person who pointed out that Forked Raiju was incredibly annoying, and got removed (well, marginalized) for a reason: The sluggish GCD in FFXIV makes on-GCD forced movements feel awkward and difficult to manage, because you can't be responsive with them, and whether it works out is almost a roulette, unlike OGCD dashes that can be timed a lot more precisely.

I mean, yeah, the advice given earlier in this thread of, "Just rearrange it for later" is accurate in practice, but that's not really addressing how awkward it is to use... it's just postponing it until a time when you're not doing anything important. Which kind of highlights that it's a chore.

It would probably be more fun if Ifrit's Favor just gave you 3 clones of yourself (or Ifrit) that you could fire off in a straight line, in succession, by repeatedly pressing the button (probably as 1.50s quick GCDs). And it would still keep the "feel" of the Ifrit trial-mechanic.