Manual is only rubbish if you're not good it. Current state of assisted passing is rubbish even if you're good at it IMO.
I'd rather have a passing mistake because of me, than perfect pass because of CPU.
Manual is more difficult than assisted.. but manual passing is not that difficult once you get used to it.
If Iniesta is putting lots of ball out for throw ins, then it means that the player is not good at manual yet.
Decent manual players usually complete more than 80% of their passes.
And they mostly pass a lot in possession since they are more patient and are looking for the right opportunity.
They can do quick consecutive one-touch passing too but unlike assisted, it requires skills and it's more satisfying when you scored a goal from it.
Long passes/crossing is satisfying too. Oh Well, that's because I modified my cross/lob button to make it manual even on 0-assist. I modified it so that whenever I press the lob/cross, the Manual(L2) modifier is also pressed. And I disabled the BS early cross, so that L1+ lob doesn't do anything.
Konami is BS, even on manual they still made the cross assisted. Luckily on PC, you can do a lot of modifications.
I've twitted officialpes about the 0-assist cross/lob before the release of pes2017 and pes2018 and everytime they've responded that they'll look into it. If I can modify it quickly, why can't they.
Manual takes time to learn at first. But once you get used it, you'll still be good at it even if you only play a couple of hours a week.
But I get it. Not everyone has the patience or the time to get good at manual. Some people easily get discouraged when they're not seeing their improvements immediately.