Finally got a chance to play around with Conjurer in a group. My take on this is that Conjurer isn't main healer any more. Sure CON got access to the Curaga line, but they are too expensive to make CON a "main healer". This pretty much means that FFXIV does not have a main healer right now. The tasks of healing and damage mitigation need to be spread around the party.

In my eyes, Conjurer is an "elemental mage". I've had more success using Stoneskin II to mitigate damage. It's cheap (only 24 MP), seems to absorb around 400 damage, and can be AoEed onto the whole party for no extra MP cost. Recast is so-so at 30 seconds, but it's better then running out of MP from trying to spam cures.

To give more concrete examples, I was duoing with a MRD. I relied on him to use Bloodbath II and Second Wind. The combination of those two abilities, with my casting Stoneskin as it came up (every 30 seconds), and an occasional Cure II from me. Rank 60 stuff I'd almost never have to use a Cure. Rank 65 and up was more challenging, for sure. We fought one Rank 69 eft (early on in the experimentation stage) and failed, because I was being a bit too conservative with the MP (trying to maintain for multiple fights), and one big TP move dropped him .

I also need to check on this, but I'm going to look more into Ethers ... it's possible that the re-use timer was dropped. I used an ether, and then was immediately able to use a potion with no cooldown. Still only gave back 50 MP, and stacks to 12, but, might get me through til the jobs come out.