First off all, take a look at the subtitle for the third gif. I really don't think the health is on the right XD.
I really like the gray health, because when I was playing, I felt like the reflecting ability was both hard to use and pretty useless to be honest. It was just better to take a hit and kill the enemy than fail miserably at reflecting the attack and then take damage multiple times when trying to reflect. I think the gray health will make the reflecting ability much more useful.
Bonus question: How do you make those gifs look so damn good without having a file that is 400 megabytes?