I'm skeptical about sacrificing your fairy. We don't know much about how it will affect your magic potency, but we do know that it's a huge loss to healing potency to have your fairy dead or dismissed. How they'll balance it is a mystery, but it's nice to see more AoE heals being added. I always felt Succor was a bit on the weak side.

Being able to exchange barriers for healing potency will be beneficial for DPS and other healers on the team who aren't taking immediate damage. I always hated how the barrier effect was essentially wasted if used on many non-tanks since the duration often wears down before they get hit. On the other hand, it's very white mage-ish and feels like they're sticking the two in a blender to make one single class.