My experience is that a heavy-barreled .223 will come down out of recoil enough to see bullet hits at 150-200 yards or more--sort of, depending on where the bullet hits. But I couldn't see the bullet strikes consistenly with a heavy-barreled .223 a month or so ago on a PD shoot, even when using 40-grain bullets
A sporter-weight .204 allows you to do the same thing, often even better. With a heavy-barreled .204 you can look through the scope the entire time, especially with 32-grain bullets. Of course a .221 or .17 Fireball, .22 Hornet, or anything like that upsets the view through the scope even less--but they don't have the range of a .204.
