Though in defence to Bashir, without him you wouldn’t have Garak, who is possibly one of the best written characters in all of SciFi.

And some of O'Brien‘s best performances were counterpointing Bashir too.

I think as a solo character, he’s a little shallow. But he works exceptionally well at being an anchor for other characters to play off.

The Inner Light begs to disagree. Plus his Borg summer camp.

But yes, those instances were a bit rare.