Maybe I'm being a crazy conspiracy theorist here, but doesn't this seem an all to convenient way to nerft Pale Masters. I mean look at the way Pale Masters are now:
1) They are fully vulnerable from stat damage from poison and disease yet have no way of healing that stat damage, short of going out of form and wasting 100 sp and having to wait 1 minute before they can go back into form. Afaik the devs even said at one point that they plan to give pale masters a way to deal with stat damage, here we are several updates later and pale masters are still vulnerable to it.
2) EE saves are so high that only the best of the best pale masters can kill things there, and stuff there hits so hard it makes aura heals impractical.
3) Wail, one the the pale master's, signature spells is now about as useful as throwing a lump of coal.