I know Aquaveil exists, I'm just wondering whey there aren't more water spells given its destructive and defensive potential and the fact that an entire section of the CNJ questline is spent discussing the power of water.
Honestly, to me, WHM nowadays seems completely disjointed from its CNJ roots, unlike other jobs such as BLM, BRD, PLD, etc... who all keep the essence of their specific base class' fantasy still relevant one way or another. The big thing that hearkened 'Conjurer' - the elemental magic - is almost completely gone from the White Mage arsenal.
Conjurer's in a very weird spot there, where it's the only class that doesn't actually resemble the classic job it became all that much (probably a relic of jobs not actually being planned by the 1.0 devs). It's got healing in common, sure, but beyond that, no; White Mages are known for spells like Holy and Dia, they don't touch Stone and Aero.
But even then, something that I think we just need to keep reiterating constantly in this thread: Remember Aquaveil. It would be one thing if the elemental magic completely fell away and got memory-holed, but they're still actively adding parts of it in, even if it's gradually moved away from the center of WHM's stage.
Most 'jobs' feel disjointed from classes to me personally. Ninja doesn't have same rogue-ish aesthetic, Bard leans all in on music aspect, Monk is a lot less about punch and more about all the balance and stuff, Paladin brings in the holy stuff that wasnt there for Gladiator, etc. The only jobs that feel like they keep class's essence, from original 9 are, imo, Warrior and Black Mage. Rest all take steps in different directions.
We should all be lucky and thankful that Aquaveil in FFXIV puts up a barrier to absorb a portion of damage taken. In FFXI, Aquaveil enables the WHM to not have casting interrupted for a few minutes.