Quote Originally Posted by Ilenya View Post
I think you are misunderstanding the idea of "melee healer"

The idea was for a healer who works in melee range, doing damage that way, but still having your standard range for your primary (Cure style) heals.
A Melee healer is traditionally what the Cleric (priest) is in D&D style systems. They wield maces. If you want to get into it, the RPG Cleric is actually one of the few D&D things not directly based on Tolkien, but rather the kind of demon/vampire hunter (think a much earlier interpretation of Van Helsing.) To avoid confusion with the Paladin (who is a holy knight, or crusader.)

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cleric...ns_%26_Dragons)
Reluctant to shed blood, clerics are limited to blunt, bludgeoning weapons unless allowed other weapons by their dogma/mythos. Being trained for battle as well as spiritual works, they may use any armor or shield.
The thing is, taken at face value the "white mage" is the Cleric in FF, and had FFXIV not turned the Conjurer into one, the Conjurer would have became the Geomancer, and the Thaumaturge (which is the actual "Priest" in this game) would have had White Mage or Black Mage or Red Mage as evolution points. These decisions were made during 1.x and are thus impossible to go back in time and change.

Suffice it to say, I think we're seeing the consequences of making those changes in 1.x contradict the lore now. Because in 1.x the only gear that was class locked was the main hand gear. That I recall. The correct lore for the WHM would not have the WHM being able to cast any destructive magic other than Holy, and Holy would only work on undead, vampires. But there's also no traditional "power of god compels thee" type of aspect to FFXIV's classes since "we" are the ones being compelled by Hydaelyn already. It's right there in the name "Warrior of Light"