I don't think nerfing AoE dmg has anything to do with the meta. This is just mainly for 4man dungeon content or some trashy mid raid tier that doesn't really matter much. Just that it looks like an oversight to me because they nerfed Bane for SMN & removed BlizII for the new cross role system. So we have nothing to spam in AoE with except Broil.

However, shadow flare doesn't concern me that much. Some guy did the math on SMN & turns out it's maybe a dps gain since you don't have to spend 2 GCDs every 30s to recast it, & can use that time for other dps skills while weaving in SF instead.

Also healer gears are melded with mostly acc to hit the acc cap, & since it's no longer needed, you can spend all those slots on crit/ss/det now.