What does FFXIV lack?

[Valence]

They're not. The passive MP generation is the same, even in its impact from Piety. Our personal sum of MP-gen & MP-savings were also nigh-identical.

I had to recheck old footage but it seems I had a memory bleedover from the experience. You're right, the regen was similar. But in essence, on top of having a lot less free ogcd heals and more hardcast healing to do, there was definitely a combination of factors that made resource scarcity be a real deal. I've seen countless parties, either dungeons or trials/raids, just keel over because they ran on fumes. I haven't seen this happen in ages since SHB/EW (especially EW+, and I suspect it has to do that they really alleviated how MP neutral or negative some rotations used to be even in ShB).

Healer rotations in Alexander Savage were chartable down to the GCD unless there were major f-ups, largely the same as now. The change was just that, given greater dynamism via GCDs over one's total effective outputs, MP was still a bit more of a shared resource instead of just a number of remaining rez charges.

Now, I'll agree fully that the ability of healers to be able to contribute more meaningfully beyond just healing (real AoE damage, often above tanks and nearing that of DPS, for instance), even if in shorter spurts only, was preferable to the dull tread we have now. I even would agree that it was better when Cure/Physick could situationally play a real part (as much from needing to top off a tank already at 80% because stuff could actually hurt as from MP costs, but still). But I think you overestimate certain sources of those differences -- something that tends make people nostalgize over what would result in mostly the same gameplay instead of focusing in one what would actually lead to the results they desire.

Again, I was speaking about trash dungeon gameplay. Adjusting was a BIG healer deal back then. That's what I enjoyed about starting as a healer, and why I've stopped playing one since then. There is no more management of anything left to do. No balancing act, no seeing how far you can go, nothing.