I never found PLD the hardest before, tbh, but I was super used to it because it was my main. But it had a bit of jank to get used to.

Before that, I found GNB the hardest (just because it could be a little distracting). Now I find that PLD has been made kinda similar to GNB, except it was more janky because of the Atonements. They improved those a little, but hopefully they'll function better and fit into the rotation better in 7.0.
I also agree with the sentiment. I like that they're trying, but I feel like I don't understand how they've come to these decisions because I can't see what they're seeing, I can only play the game and note similarities between jobs, especially in the tank/ healer roles.
They have provided their philosophy in keynotes and live letters prior to each expansion (the philosophy that they don't want players having to track 10 different tiny status effects) and that they want the jobs to be more comfortable to play.

Changes don't usually seem unexpected by players who have been pointing out the issue they are addressing either. For example, PLD's issues were frequently talked about by players so the lack of explanation is mainly an issue if you weren't seeing the discussions happening amongst the community. Tank buffs or ranged physical buffs in EW were also frequently talked about amongst the community prior to them happening.

If you see similarities between jobs, maybe it's because whenever there is a difference, someone complains "well that job doesn't have what the other job has" so SE addresses it (like with the Shake It Off-Divine Veil example). Before tank mitigation was made more the same, they had issues like "physical-only" mit with parry, blocks and physical defense on a lot of major cooldowns and the fix made them all the same.