My experience... Plugs front and rear, standard A-gauge domestic jackfield. Three years and counting no issues whatsoever. No maintenance necessary. Almost daily use.
... But I am using relatively expensive Signex CPJ48 panels. Buy cheap, buy twice (or get frustrated and throw the baby out with the bathwater!)
I wouldn't advocate adding a patchbay just because they look good.
Good patchbays are expensive and obviously introduce potential points of failure. So if you don't need the flexibility of a patchbay don't use one.
But if you do need that flexibility the only other equivalent option is an electronic router or matrix system which is even more expensive.
For the OP, the question is really just about workflow. He has sufficient connectivity available to wire all three outboard devices directly to the DAW via his RME and Pulse interfaces. If he only needs to access the outboard units individually it will work perfectly well if connected that way.
The only downside to that approach is if he wants to daisy-chain the outboard devices since that will require several A-D/D-A passes in and out of the interfaces. Sound quality really won't be an issue with multiple A-D/D-A stages, but latency through the converters may well be.
In that situation it would be much better to use an analogue patchbay so that all analogue signal processing can be performed in the analogue domain, with only the complete chain's send and return passing through a converter.
If one unit is used more often than others it could be normalled across a set of interface send/returns, but when a chain of processing is needed (or a different unit to the default option) that can be over-plugged quickly, easily, and flexibly on the patchbay.
It's really just about workflow, flexibility, and convenience. But don't skimp on quality.
