Quote Originally Posted by JamsC View Post
It may be my reading comprehension, but I am really struggling to understand how your post disagrees with mine. Kisai’s point, as I understand it, was that white mages could do no dps at all other than single digit damage. I haven’t gone away to check the accuracy of your list yet, but what you have compiled here is just more proof that their point is incorrect. I dont know what else to say.
I'm kinda confused how you could be confused lol. Your claim (which I directly quoted) was "healers have a range of powerful damaging spells" and that the FF series "promoted healers dealing damage when healing wasn't required." I showed repeatedly how healers did not have a range of spells, but rather one single damage spell in most games of the series. Furthermore, given that even said single spell typically isn't learned until very late in the game, for most of the game white mages have no damaging spells at all. The cherry on top is how, even once learned, that spell usually cost so much MP that you could only cast it a few times (without even counting how it would interfere with your ability to heal), you weren't going to be casting it much. In every way possible, white mage/healer characters in the FF1-9 games had few options to deal damage and weren't intended to be DPS'ing when they weren't healing. The *only* exception to that seems to be FF3, where they had one single spell you could spam if desired (which I subtly alluded to how healers work in FF14).

What of course is being left out of this is that healers had a whole slew of *support* spells in these games (various defensive spells like protect/shell, dispels for various statuses, haste/slow for allies/enemies, etc.). What healers *were* intended to do when not healing was cast support magic to provide buffs/debuffs. What they were *not* intended to do is deal direct damage.