I actually posted a thread about this but it was deleted or something. Here's what I said earlier.
Maybe I just don't understand this yet, but it seems like our larger health bars have been replaced with smaller ones and a protection bar above them. I have no issue with if they function the same way as health. Unfortunately they don't.
If you lose your protection bar you can't heal it back like you could with a larger health bar and it doesn't regenerate any portion of it between rounds. So if you lose your protection bars in round 1 you will be signifcantly more squishy by round 3 where you will face the most powerful enemies and would need the larger health bar the most.
Lastly I have to wonder how this will effect Galactic Warfare. Will you get your protection bar at node 1 and have no way to replenish it thru 12 nodes?
This does not function the same as a large health bar because you can't heal the protection bar and seems like an overall nerf to health across the board.