Aesthetics of healer

[Kele_Star]

In these three, IV features a Summoner/Black Mage, IX features two Summoner/White Mages, and X has a Summoner/White Mage as well.

Your post made me feel super nostalgic >//< haha. i will correct my comment above and change "appeared in many games" to "appeared in a few games". still i would argue that it does still appear in combonation with whitemage in the series more then it does with scholar in the series :]

[Renathras]

Your post made me feel super nostalgic >//< haha. i will correct my comment above and change "appeared in many games" to "appeared in a few games". still i would argue that it does still appear in combonation with whitemage in the series more then it does with scholar in the series :]

True. Also Black Mage.

Though this is also kind of due to a weird quirk of Final Fantasy games - White Mage is so often the base true Healer Job (FFTactics had Chemist, but WHM was unlocked directly from it and Chemist was a bit more of a utility Job than a Healer outright), and is generally powerful for the role, that they often don't HAVE another direct Healer Job, instead having advanced combo Jobs, like Sage, Magus, Seer, etc that tend to have White Magic + something else. WHM is so effective, there's generally not a second Healer Job necessary.

But in MMOs, people like some options and variety. In FFXIV 1.X, WHM was the only Healer Job, and SCH was only added in 2.0. So SCH doesn't have as much history to draw on in the first place. FF3 Scholars (the first iteration of the Job) were basically RDMs without physical abilities that instead had Scan/Libra type abilities to find enemy weaknesses and make them take more damage. Come to think of it, the FF11 Scholar was also kind of a Red Mage-ish Job (though it had to pick to be one or the other of White Mage/Black Mage at a time...)

Honestly, I see the Faerie itself as a thing unique to Nym itself more than a trait of the Job, but that's just me. I don't think there's any similar system in other FF games. Even the ones mentioned before, FF9 and arguably FF10, the summons used aren't generally defensive in nature. I think Eiko's Carbuncle may be the only one? Debateably Phoenix because of it giving Fulllife to KO'd party members. Garnet's are all attack/damaging, as is Eiko's Fenrir and I think Madine. FFX, all of Yuna's summons deal damage/attack as well.

It is kinda odd they didn't include more healing ones, since there are at least three (Slyph/Faerie [where Eos probably derives from], Unicorn, and Asura, I think?), but oddly, none of the White Mage/Summoner characters in the series history actually use those healing ones. Perhaps they thought it would be redundant...