Yoshi-P: "If you want more engaging content, go play Ultimate"

[Silver-Strider]

It feels like healers in general have lost a lot of identity compared to other jobs. Scholar (Dot/dps healer) lost its identity to Summoner, to differentiate the two and to make them feel like 2 completely different jobs. White mage lost all of its druid theme and is now basically a Lilly/light themed job - which for me at least was such a drastic change aesthetically that I can‘t identify myself with anymore.
Astrologian lost all the skills that made it cool to begin with, like different cards giving different buffs and also the time magic to extend buffs, which made it engaging and you had at least another useful skill to use…

Oh believe me, I hate the whole Holy Magic Aesthetic WHM has now. I understood Holy since that's the signature WHM spell but why strip it of its Elemental Roots in ShB just to give it a skill like Aqua Veil in EW, especially since the Water Magic Aspect of WHM was always the least explored aspect of the job that we'd been asking for years to be expanded upon. They remove Fluid Aura after YEARS of killing it slowly and then decide, "here's a water barrier".
Not only that but they went hard on the whole Lily theme as well. Holy looks like a Flower Blooming and Lilybell is literally a plant.

They obviously can't commit to what aesthetic they want for Healers, with the lone exception being that Healers just have to be in a Dress/Robe of some kind. I would kill for some Chainmail Armor that doesn't end in a Skirt tyvm.

[Deceptus]

Oh believe me, I hate the whole Holy Magic Aesthetic WHM has now. I understood Holy since that's the signature WHM spell but why strip it of its Elemental Roots in ShB just to give it a skill like Aqua Veil in EW, especially since the Water Magic Aspect of WHM was always the least explored aspect of the job that we'd been asking for years to be expanded upon. They remove Fluid Aura after YEARS of killing it slowly and then decide, "here's a water barrier".
Not only that but they went hard on the whole Lily theme as well. Holy looks like a Flower Blooming and Lilybell is literally a plant.

They obviously can't commit to what aesthetic they want for Healers, with the lone exception being that Healers just have to be in a Dress/Robe of some kind. I would kill for some Chainmail Armor that doesn't end in a Skirt tyvm.

I'm pretty sure the whole "Holy" WHM spells came from the fact we were on the First Shard, surrounded by Light and since CNJ/WHM bases their spells off of the nature of the environment they're in it would make sense they'd pick up more light based attacks.

[Silver-Strider]

I'm pretty sure the whole "Holy" WHM spells came from the fact we were on the First Shard, surrounded by Light and since CNJ/WHM bases their spells off of the nature of the environment they're in it would make sense they'd pick up more light based attacks.

I was asking more about Aqua Veil and the Flower motif being included. The Flower part I can kind of understand with the whole "I'll give you a beautiful Flower" thing with Meteion but it just feels like WHM's aesthetic design is all over the place.

[AnotherPerson]

I was asking more about Aqua Veil and the Flower motif being included. The Flower part I can kind of understand with the whole "I'll give you a beautiful Flower" thing with Meteion but it just feels like WHM's aesthetic design is all over the place.

To be fair, people did want White Mage to get some nature-based skills back during Shadowbringers after noting our Earth spells were replaced for Light-spells, especially for water element-skills - which there was a severe lack of in our toolkit. This resulted in Aquaveil.

If you want to go indepth, a plant requires water, earth, air, and light to survive. This indirectly means we have all the tools necessary to make a flower bloom. You can treat the "Secret of the Lily" as a secret technique that combines all the elements a White Mage possesses to utilize a healing lily.

Liturgy of the Bell looks like a combination of water, earth, and air based on how the animation plays out, but you can also say it comprises of light too if it's based on the lily-system (and if the name is anything to give away).

For Light-based magic in particular, it seems that's part of A-Towa-Cant's repertoire of spells due White mages being more religious in their practices in their storyline (Holy, Benediction, Divine Benison, Tetragrammaton, Plenary Indulgence, and Confession all hint towards this idea towards a Divinity of sorts). The Holy spell was a result of A-Towa-Cant teaching us that through the soul crystal or something. Supposedly, our nature makes our affinity to Light-based/Divine-based magic stronger as we go through expansions, which resulted in us learning Glare, Dia, and eventually Afflatus Misery. So our version of White Mage comprises of Water, Earth, Air, and Light.

Though, my headcanon for White mage having light-based spells in Shadowbringers is due to being too attuned to the light. Since a White Mage's ability borrows elements from the surrounding area, we just naturally started using Light-based elements since that's the only abundant element remaining in Shadowbringers. We learn that depending on whether the element is Astral or Umbral, light magic can be more offensive in nature in creating flowing aether or stagnating aether. So now, not only do we have divine healing, we have debilitating light spells too.

In Endwalker, we got more access to the elements again, which resulted in other elements coming back. ... That being said though, I figure the upgrade path for Glare to Glare III was because the developers wanted to continue with 1 DPS skill path rather than give us a variety of spells.

[TaleraRistain]

I was asking more about Aqua Veil and the Flower motif being included. The Flower part I can kind of understand with the whole "I'll give you a beautiful Flower" thing with Meteion but it just feels like WHM's aesthetic design is all over the place.

It wasn't really that surprising. We've had that sort of motif for a while. Back in Stormblood, we had a cane that literally had butterflies fluttering around the end of it. This isn't something new in Endwalker.

[Nizzi]

It wasn't really that surprising. We've had that sort of motif for a while. Back in Stormblood, we had a cane that literally had butterflies fluttering around the end of it. This isn't something new in Endwalker.

ShB had that too for WHM with the final relic step, Blade's Mercy having butterflies floating (maybe this is what you mean)
It's a bit confusing when SCH got Expedient which has butterflies too... why do WHM and SCH both have this aesthetic choice present in their items/abilities?

[TaleraRistain]

ShB had that too for WHM with the final relic step, Blade's Mercy having butterflies floating (maybe this is what you mean)
It's a bit confusing when SCH got Expedient which has butterflies too... why do WHM and SCH both have this aesthetic choice present in their items/abilities?

Nope, I mean the Antiquated Aymur, the artifact gear cane, had butterflies flying around the end. We also got the Lily mechanic in that expansion.

They do seem to not be able to make up their mind if they want us to be a pretty pretty flower princess or a nun, since from HW, to SB, to ShB we went nun, pretty pretty flower princess, then back to nun. Though in EW they did something new and made us a wedding cake. I think that one has butterflies, too.

[Deceptus]

ShB had that too for WHM with the final relic step, Blade's Mercy having butterflies floating (maybe this is what you mean)
It's a bit confusing when SCH got Expedient which has butterflies too... why do WHM and SCH both have this aesthetic choice present in their items/abilities?

It's kind of the same question:

Why did WHM get wings via Temperance and SCH didn't? Seems like it would have been more thematic for SCH.

[Zarkovitch]

This game suffer of mom spaghetti. The first time was great but longer you eat it the longer you cannot stand it. That what I feel like with this game in general. This expansion is a joke in terms transparacy with devs and playerbase. What I notice is Endwalker is semi rework of old content with the same safe content with touch of harvest moon. Don't get me wrong I want to see what about with harvest moon thing. But, devs should let us know this expansion are reworks in general.

[Shurrikhan]

It's kind of the same question:

Why did WHM get wings via Temperance and SCH didn't? Seems like it would have been more aesthetically similar to SCH.

Honestly, it's exactly what you'd expect to get upon eating your fairy.