It's simply a stylistic choice.

First off I prefer reactive and action oriented combat as opposed to monitoring and maintaining buffs/debuffs.
Combo systems make for interesting gameplay and rotations without the need to monitor stuff. Proc based gameplay achieves the same. Just doing things directly that don't require me to monitor constantly.

I know that you can just get a muscle memory rotation going for DoT timing and such as well, but knowing my damage is coming from a DoT versus me actively smacking the thing just doesn't sit right. Probably because...

Secondly, character archetype matters a great deal to me. They solved one of the original cruxes I had with the game in that I can at least LOOK like I'm wearing heavy armor now while not suffering a performance hit, but the same can't be said for weapons. I switch to a bow, I'm now XxLegolasxX#1278523 instead of a badass using a big melee 2h, guts style, to crush my enemies.

That's only due to a few other key aspects of combat in ESO, coupled with a lack of imagination on your part.

I listed numerous ways around that problem already, it just happens that ESO doesn't have any of those.

No cooldowns on skills, no real combo system, etc.

I do think within the current context of how eso combat works that more intense resource management (those hard hitting skills deplete you faster so you have to heavy attack weave or something) could offer the "complexity" you seem to think DoT management adds. Really, all it is is an excuse to bar swap (just a button press) and spam more skills (again more button presses).

I get that executing a rotation is more complex than just spamming a skill, but it's still a learned pattern that eventually becomes muscle memory and might as well be spamming the same key. If you're gonna tout skill as a reason, nothing beats reaction time and prediction in a dynamic combat scenario. Since the latter is only present in PvP (and only really matters in 1v1 or small group, not the typical zerg cyro PvP is), for PvE, that means the pinnacle in skill play comes down to reaction, which ESO offers basically nothing of since procs are non-existent and bosses are all scripted.

There is an alternative if DoTs if they worked differently. Or if, as Checkmath said, they were less efficient than their direct damage counterparts, or if using dots oom'd you as fast as using DD attacks, etc.

There are numerous ways of getting this. I'm an avid believer in build diversity and picking your poison so to speak. If I focus 100% of my stats on direct damage stuff, I shouldn't ever have to touch a dot because my direct damage attacks are just that much more efficient use of my resources.

The fact that, regardless of build or stats, everything still uses bow as stamina should be telling.

Build diversity should be a thing. You want to bleed/poison/direct damage/etc, you focus it and whatever you pick comes out about even with someone else who picked something different.

What's the point in having all these skills if 90% of them get ignored because they're so outclassed by others and the meta is well over 2x what other builds are capable of?

Yeah @b.bredfeldtub17_ESO is right about this. DoT builds being the META is entirely a stylistic choice on ESO's part.

It might be hard to imagine if you haven't played other MMOs, but there are games where burst damage builds are equally as effective at killing raid bosses as builds that stack damage over time. The burst damage of their attacks compensates for the slight downtime in damage when they re-cast. In ESO though, because of lag, constrained dev resources, and the embrace of weaving (not actual ani-cancelling but weaving), the time between casts really adds up, so we use DoT builds because the burst just can't compensate for the downtime without nuking pvp. In some games, the damage over time builds are even more effective in PvP, which shouldn't shock too many people. (Also, a fair number of games do balance PvP and PvE differently, so you can have ultra-high burst in PvE without annihilating PvP, but don't tell anyone.)

I don't have that much of an issue with the meta being DoT focused (there's a lot more to hate about the meta IMO), but I did always notice bemusedly.

I'm not asking for perfection; I know that's unreasonable. But I can't imagine a build even approaching 30k without some of the mandatory DoTs, let alone 40k. The discrepancy between skills and meta vs non-meta is just that staggering.