These changes are interesting but Scholar still has a clear identity as the offensive 'DPS' healer, barely having to use GCD healing in many situations. It's clear that they want Scholar to be an offensive healer that uses aetherflow abilities to heal while using their gcd for DPS. The pets are certainly a part of that, but ultimately they serve mostly to increase you and your co-healer's DPS by reducing healing requirements.

Whether Scholar is fun or 'well-designed' is up for debate, but at the moment the majority of people seem happy with Scholar, so it's unlikely we'll see any changes to it in the near future