What the term "healer" means to me

[Connor]

I've played Final Fantasy games where the white mages could blast nearly as well as the black mages.

Which ones? From memory in FFI White Mages only have Holy, in III they only have Aero/Stone(plus Tornado and Quake)/Holy. In V there aren’t any offensive white Mage spells because you can just set black magic. Garnet and Eiko had offensive options through summons and Holy, but that’s because they’re healers and summoners squished together (it would be a bit weird if Ifrit and Shiva healers the party lol. I’m not massively experienced with XI but from what I understand healers there are more focused on buffing/debuffing and healing than offense, particularly for White Mages , and Scholars too were often called on for healing and support (though they can also access offense with Dark Arts).

Not saying that any of this somehow contradicts what you’re saying, just why my own thoughts on the matter differed from your own. And I mean, it would be more weird if everyone perceived things the exact same way. I think the fact that everyone has such different views on what a ‘healer’ is suggest that developers should maybe try and accommodate more than one playstyle for the role. I said that coming into something expecting one thing just to be handed another can feel jarring, but that applies to players who see healers as being more involved and offense-oriented too. Like, if they made all healers full-on ‘only healing’, they’d be ignoring a large part of the playerbase. Conversely though, if they did the same but with DPS and gave healers full-on DPS rotations, they’re still ignoring a large part of the playerbase that would like a more passive/supportive role. People who want a more offensive oriented healer playstyle aren’t happy with current healers, but players who want a more supportive playstyle aren’t happy either.