In my case it has no effect.
Basically the indent location of the bullet is what I’m trying to quickly set.
I double click on the indent marker at the upper left hand corner, and 'First Line: ', is what I need to change. If I have 5 separate lines or so, this is very tedious. In Microsoft Word, I can quickly do this with the Format Painter.
When using an application, forget your muscle memory of other applications. Writer is not a drop-in replacement of M$ Word. It is a different application based on different principles.
Word has severe limitations when it comes to abstract definition of document structure and the ways to interact with it. This is why M$ Word offers so many manual formatting buttons and keyboard shortcuts.
Bullet or numbering is a “decoration” which “disturbs” the first line of a paragraph in several ways. The “disturbance” attributes are grouped in a list style. A reduced version of such a list style is presented in Format>Bullet & Numbering to offer a weakened version of the feature for users coming from Word in a way looking more or less like what is present in Word.
A list style takes control of the left indent (in LTR languages; reverse for RTL) and first line indent of the paragraph (style). This means these attributes from the paragraph style are ignored in list items. Playing with the cursors in the ruler at best just creates conflicts between list and paragraph styles, at worst messes up the document in an unrecoverable way.
Your best fix is to create a list style describing the formatting of your list and to apply it on your list items. A double-click on the list name while the cursor is in the item or while severl items are selected is all you have to do.
Learn how to master styles. Start by reading the Writer Guide and practise.