There is no longer the ability to directly pm someone when replying to a topic. Can I re-enable?

All these use cases are covered by the Message button in users cards.

If you wanted to send a PM to a user, with a quote to something they said in a public topic:

In the post that contains the text you want to quote, click on the user’s username, and then click on the Message button:

The composer for the PM will open in the public topic, so you can highlight the text to quote as you would normally:

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