Yoshi P even said before DT got released that the game will shift into a different direction a lot of players wont like. Even for the Rising event, where Yoshi P shows up and talks to the WoL had some message like the game shifting or something. I dont remember the exact wording, but can probably get looked up on youtube or so.
For me the direction of the game has become pretty clear in the past few expansions. 2min meta, hyper balance, no risks, counter button bloat.

And literally isnt the DDR encounters what players asked for?
"The game is too easy, all mechs are so slow, target rings are too big, we want to fight for uptime etc"
So what now? They changed it. Small target rings, fight for uptime, fast mechanics, more stress. Of course only really in high end content and not "normal" content because they design from the top to bottom and not bottom to top. They make the hardest version of a fight and then water it down into an easier version. Jobs get balanced around savage and ultimate and not from the bottom up, because why would they? It would just be a mess then. They need to function flawlessly in the hardest content and if they dont it quickly gets addressed.

The difficulty of the game does not come from jobs, the difficulty is defined by the encounter. If you want interesting job gameplay for a leveling roulette then i doubt this is where the game is heading anytime soon.

The devs do know that players are very attached to their jobs which again is why no big changes can or will happen and jobs will be left mostly the way they are now, because even slight changes get huge backlash. The smn rework is one of the biggest risks they ever took and it taught them to not take any risks anymore.