Combat is well paced for the endgame you seem to be refusing to go do. Do your friends do Savage, or even Orbonne? Imagine doing something like Construct 7 in Ridorana with action-based combat, trying to dodge Dispose. IIRC (and to be honest I've only played a couple action-based MMOs, so pardon me) when you go into combat on action-based your run speed decreases, and your dodges have cooldowns. You'd never survive.

I haven't played WoW in a long while, but from watching my mother play, it's own combat isn't that much different. It's not an achievement or a valid point to compare your "top tier" raiding position in WoW to your not-even-done-with-the-prologue position of FF14. Yes, you're playing the prologue. Also 20-30 hours in a class won't teach you anything but the bare basics, especially since so much changes from ARR -> HW -> SB. SMN is the biggest example of that, but even SCH has changes in those levels.

I mean no one's saying you can't have an opinion, we're all just saying have an informed opinion. Now if you're just that bored of the game and you dislike the story that much (which is FF14's core thing, story) then you're perfectly within your rights to stop playing and stop subbing. It's hard to play if the start isn't at least engaging enough to keep your interest, but you're sort of sending mixed messages; you seem to enjoy the game and the story, or at least see the potential (which grows as you progress), but then you're saying the game is going to die if it doesn't change every core aspect of itself.