Basic thought process is you have mitigations, possible party buffs, and your own hard hitting/important oGCDs that you want to utilize at certain points of the fight, but a majority of your rotation works in a way that if you don't plan around it, you would risk overwriting one of those constant, ever present damaging oGCDs, and thus suffer a slight damage loss.

To deal with this, you are given a few GCD options, ideally through a resource + skills with charges for flexibility that do not trigger follow up oGCDS. You decide where to place these throughout a fight for mitigation placements and burst windows to fit other important oGCDs separate from your main filler rotation. Think BLM placing instant cast spells throughout their rotation for planned oGCD usage, except your issue isn't that you have cast times, it's that you'd otherwise have to lose out a damaging oGCD to use something else if not planned correctly.

Even with all of this in mind, I have no doubt this would still fall victim to having your rotations feeling nearly the exact same across every fight as a phys ranged, so I would also propose that a fair number of your weapon skills/abilities have close range or far range damage bonuses. Something like <=~3y for close, >=~10y for far. Think melee positionals, where the skill is still usable in range regardless, but has a base potency with a potential for additional potency provided you meet the requirement. Perhaps have the associated actions on your hotbar do a sort of glow when their range bonus is met + a job gauge that also indicates whether you're currently in one of the ranges. You too as a phys ranged would be able to play and optimize around what space the boss is allowing and denying you pull to pull.



This is fundamentally pretty blueprint level with a lot of room for some sort of added gauge(s), other resource management, and general GCD to GCD gameplay rules. But I think something of this style for a new phys ranged would offer the sort of positioning, movement, and extra thought put into the roles' rotations that it is currently comparatively lacking to its melee and caster counterparts.

For aesthetic funsies, I'll just add that a dual wielding crossbow job is my ideal; have main hand be the GCDs and off hand be the oGCDs. Maybe mix instant cast magic usage that would comprise a lot of your free weave windows (thematically I'm thinking something along the lines of D3 Demon Hunter). Phys ranged kind of lacks a "cool" job, BRD and DNC are more whimsical and MCH feels a bit goofy and over the top. (I still love it though)