I don't eat a lot of pasta these days, but I did spend a couple months getting decent at Cacio e Pepe, and one caveat I've picked up in the last 10 years is that some pasta dishes (the Roman ones in particular) really want you to finish cooking in the sauce, so the pasta takes up some of the flavor of the sauce while it finishes rehydrating.

The rehydration thing is still a killer trick --- especially for Mac and Cheese.