I think that you're needlessly digging a hole for yourself here purely for the sake of saving face. Most people do see WAR's lifesteal as actual life steal, and you yourself are on record as stating the same. There's nothing particularly clever about this; it's just the way the actions are designed. I have nothing against WAR being the best at self-sustain, but I do want to see an appropriate visual theme around it. There are plenty of other ways of doing it other than vampirically siphoning off someone's life force. Honestly, there's no shame in just dropping this particular argument. I won't hold you to it, but I don't think it lends anything constructive to either your case or this discussion.

The reason why Thrill is better than a flat shield is because it still has value if you don't mitigate any damage with it. When the effect expires, you still retain the HP gained from it. There are plenty of ways of doing interesting temporary HP mechanics, including having your overheals persist as HP. But that's a different conversation.

There can be multiple ways of achieving the same goal. WAR is a purely physical job focused around raw strength. They don't need magic. Why cast healing spells on yourself when you have enhanced wound healing and regeneration? Why shield yourself when your skin is as tough as iron? Why teleport across the arena when you can simply jump? Why cast a barrier on your allies when you can give a rousing battle cry that raises their stats? Why cast offensive spells when you could punch the ground and make rocks fly out? There's no limitation on that. It's literally one of the easiest jobs to come up with a consistent theme for, and you don't need to introduce magical elements to keep it competitive.

I suppose the bottom line is that I would like to see the development team sit down and think about the visual story that each job is telling through the action set, even if it means reworking some actions. It's probably something that would be helped if they had specific design 'leads' for each job who have a sense of the overarching 'theme'. When players complain about identity, it usually indicates a lack of a focused 'vision' behind the job's playstyle. It really needs to be coherent and consistent. The means are every bit as important as the ends here.