There were(are) ways, sure. Chain casting Hand of Nonia, Sermon of Justice, Divine Response work to lower mana pretty quickly, too. Chaining Divine Alliance even keeps healing the raid, if you cycle out targets to put it on everyone. But an instant button to make it happen all at once sure is easy.
Honestly - the truth is that Devs respond this way to most things they don't want to have to deal with, even if the change they made was wrong and inappropriate:
100% Truth. I remember a monk mitigation nerf due to devs poorly itemizing an expansion. 2 weeks after the nerf they admitted it didn't affect the top monks that they were aiming for, and it over penalized lower monks that they weren't intending to mess with. Nerf stayed for 2 years. 2 years of "We messed up, but we aren't going to fix it."