Rumored that they are cutting the entire role action category so protect might finally be killed. Things that are actually important will just be reintegrated into each job's list of actions. Part of me wishes that is true, although a pool of shared actions has some positives. Protect though is a bit silly to keep if the goal is to remove button bloat. Increase characters' base defense and eliminate the spell so we won't ever need to cast protect at the start of a dungeon again.