The new publishing experience is pretty cool and adds a lot of value. But unfortunately one function gone missing on the way (version comment without notifying watchers) - I think it should be clear to bring this already used functionality back. I, as a Jira and Confluence Admin, use this functionality a lot. I maintain a lot of technical documentation where I need the version comments when major changes happened, but I don't want to notify watchers, because I do this separately via blog (to explain the change).
Also I would highly recommend to add the "notify others" checkbox in the Publish Dialog, like said in the announcement. We also trained our colleagues to publish pages with notifying watchers only if it is necessary (to control the notifications coming from Confluence). Most colleagues are doing it, but are annoyed because the button is hidden in another menu and therefore often click the "Publish" Button instead (by mistake). In my opinion, is notifying watchers or not a publishing option the user should be able to select and therefore it should be part of the Publish Dialog.
And if you add the "notify others" checkbox into the Publish Dialog, you automatically added the version comment back as well - two birds with one stone 
Great to see a checkbox today for "Notify watchers by email" (that I can un-check for my spelling/grammar/formatting nitpicks)
That's my request done.