"The integration of ACR in Photoshop is miserable" - in what way? It works fine for me, and quite easily.
I am sure you know this but simply accepted it as "God given".
ACR is a plugin of Photoshop, with all the restrictions.
- Do you never want to take a look at another image while you are editing in ACR? You can not switch over to PS.
- You can not add or remove a file from those initially opened by ACR.
- You can not process files from several directories together.
- You can not accept the adjustments of some files (i.e. storing the adjustments) but keep some others unchanged.
Unfortunately, the restriction of processing files only from a single directory applies to DPP as well.