"closing the DPS gap"

[Shurrikhan]

My take from it boils down to this; They are rewarding good play now instead of punishing bad play.

While that would be appreciated, if the case, I don't see how these changes have largely pointed in that direction. Note also that the line between the two is incredibly thin.

To be clear though, let's go ahead and define the two.
How much "good" play is there available within a given job's gameplay in a give fight compared to "bad" play.
If you see the potential for good play as being the narrower portion, then know that by advantaging it, you are disadvantaging anything that is not it -- the majority of gameplay, and therefore narrowing acceptable play.
If you see the "bad" play as the narrower portion, then punishing bad play acts more as a trap that steers you away from very specific forms of play, likely found to be less interesting, intensive, engaging, or simply less productive than everything else that remains outside of "bad" play, leaving a much wider range of options open.

To me the two are indistinguishable, but I can see how it at least lends itself to a "glass half full / half empty" connotation game.

That said, I'm not sure anything has changed but for BLM. They now have one concern when under the effect of Enochian, down from two. That's it. That's your reduction to the potential for "bad play" in job-unique mechanics.

For the rest, I'm seeing either no change or an increase in punitive output-manipulation. Take Paladin's shiny new Lightning Sword move (Requiescat), for example: it acts as Fight or Flight over time atop its mana-dependent heavy hit if and only if the Paladin's mana is over 80%. And this is after having given Paladin a second, worthwhile spell. Effectively, it becomes: don't touch your mana-based utility as Requiescat's coming up, and you better pay back any time you spend mana asap, lest you lose your stacking Fight or Flight version 2 buff. Bad play becomes "anything that fails to achieve 80+% mana at 80 second intervals".

How does that differ from the narrow "good" play of CD stacking or effective CD holding (where any failure to do so maximally is "bad" or at least "worse" play), which is 90% of every DPS's gameplay decision-making, regardless of job? The only difference I'm seeing is that I can make an obvious rotational difference in the short window of a CD (RS, HE, WF, BFB, IR, all these hefty contributors to skill-gap) to try to draw a little bit more out of it depending on the order of my abilities cast, my reactions, and my awareness, whereas this addition seems far more vague—in short, less exciting insofar as I can picture it. It's like timing ones Berserk, except that success is rendered not by action (e.g. offensive CD-popping) but by inaction (not spending mana if too close to the CD).