Why are passives a thing?

No, they really couldn’t, for the reasons that I’ve outlined above in numerous posts. When Sym was a support, nobody considered her noodle to be utility. It was an attribute of her damage. Nobody considers Brig’s LMB to have utility because it ignores barriers and DM; it’s simply a property of a melee weapon in Overwatch.

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Passives are not a problem in this game…

We can argue all day on this, so I’ll leave it at “We have differing opinions on what constitutes utility, and there’s nothing wrong with that.”

We can, but as you yourself stated at the start of all of this: the definition you’re using is not “considered “utility” to the average member of the community”. You can try and change that definition one person at a time if you want, but personally I’d recommend rolling with the definition that other people are using instead. Language devolves into an excerice in frustration if we all come up with our own individual flans for common manticores.