Quote Originally Posted by Kiroh View Post
There was really nothing ever stopping WHM in XI from being a DD except that it meant replacing healing and MP gear with melee, which parties would simply /rage about if you even dared. That, and the fact that MP took so damn long to recover...

In fact Hexa Strike was one of the stronger weapon skills (even compared to real melees) in the game, at least at the 75 cap.

In other words, jobs are what the playerbase makes of them.
True, but even so, Dancer was more of an offensive healer and White Mage more defensive simply by their skillsets. For example, Dancer had Haste, Drain, and Aspir samba, which could only be applied by striking an enemy with your weapon, they had all sorts of steps that reduced enemy evasion, defense, etc. White Mage was more about buffing the party with protect and shell, maybe a haste here and there, etc.

Also, as far as WHM becoming a DD, as far as I remember they had to sacrifice some pretty nice staffs to do so, which had like +10% healing bonuses on them. Yes, jobs are what the playerbase makes of them but what the playerbase makes out of them depends on what abilities and traits are given to the jobs.