And finally back to doing this topic and the next class because it occurred to me I'm lazy and should be getting back to it. This next one I'll just go straight in and not be a teasing jackass about it:
White MageThe original and most well known healing job from the franchise, and synonymous with the "Healing Magic Class" when referring to the role outside of it, White Mage is pretty straight forward in what determines it. It uses lots of Healing and Defensive spells, usually has limited offense until endgame where Holy appears and suddenly they're actually quite competent at it, low defenses though better than Black Mages, and wields staves. Look, it's the White Mage; you know what they do, and what identifies as them, so without further ado...ANALYSES!!!
Final Fantasy 1 (NES/Origins): White Mage runs into a similar problem that Black Mage has here, namely "Red Mage does most of what White Mage does and a lot more." To White Mage's credit, more MP is meaningful here, and Harm is better for busting Undead than Fire...by which I mean Harm 1 vs. Fire 1; I'd be lying if I said the Harm series > the Fire series, that's clearly wrong with the 2nd and 3rd versions of the spells. White Mage starts the game actually not too bad offensively because Hammers are alright, but this really doesn't last. One thing White Mage does have on Red Mage though is access to Life before promoting, which is a handy bonus for Earth Cave through Ordeals. They also get Life 2 when promoting to White Wizards for a utility Red Wizard doesn't have at all. The problem is these utilities are either short lived, gotten too late, or far too limited. It's not as one sided as Black Mage vs. Red Mage was, but it's still an uphill battle for White Mage nonetheless here.
Final Fantasy 1 (Dawn of Souls/PSP): Remember how I said the new magic system greatly benefited the Mages here? Yeah, White Mage is a lot better here. As I noted, Int doing something means White Mage's healing is suddenly substantially better than Red Mage's, which can be crucial against some bosses. Having an MP system means the access to the higher spells is more meaningful, though Phoenix Downs do make Life less meaningful, but Full Life is still extremely handy for Mid-Battle of course, and unreplace-able. Item Casting running off Int makes White Mage better as well since they can do it better than Non-Black mages, giving them reasonable offense with stuff like the Mage Staff. The last significant advantage they gained? A high HP score. For the first half of the game, White Mage has your 2nd best HP behind Warrior, which I know sounds weird, but it's true. Second half of the game, Grandmaster goes on a crazy HP hike and will likely surpass them, but they'll still have a solid score and not be far from the 999 HP cap, which combined with Ultima Weapon if you get it, gives them a good weapon! Overall, like Black Mage, greatly improved compared to their original selves.
Final Fantasy 2 (NES/Origins): Minwu is like the sole character in FF2 with an identifiable class classification...well, ok, there's Josef, but shh! He joins with a crap ton of White Magic at good levels, getting basically everything but Holy, has high magic stats, and...yeah, you get the idea. Minwu is really good too, though this is mostly because he's built very Jagen-like. Before he joins, you have a brief segment in Fynn which barely counts as a dungeon, then he joins to basically help baby your low level team until they get something resembling competence. he has some unintuitive tricks like the Swap trick, Teleport for instant death, and...ok that's it but point is he's good!
Final Fantasy 2 (Dawn of Souls/PSP): I'm just going to cover his aftergame appearance because his main game appearance is basically unchanged. Minwu basically makes the first half of Soul of Rebirth bare-able because of all the support spells; it's very possible you have 3 characters with under-developed gear (Scott always joins with full Mithril set) due to FF4 "unequip all temps!" mindset, so Minwu having all that magic is handy. He also gets Ultima as a unique spell, which given how many spells he knows and their levels, he can get passable damage out of it. Yeah, I got nothing more to say beyond that...
Final Fantasy 3 (NES): White Mage starts the game being kind of really bad. Remember how I initially said Black Mage is meaningless at first because Red Mage does it? Yeah, I was misguided; White Mage is the one who suffers. The Spell Charge advantage White Mage has on Red Mage is meaningless early game, and while this is true with Black Mage, Black Mage can at least do meaningful things when it runs out of MP due to equipping bows, something White Mage cannot do. Also Magic Damage difference is more meaningful than Healing. Of course, this doesn't last; after you get to Dragon Mountain, the MP differences start to show up, Item Casting Staves show up to give White Mage something resembling offense (which still sucks but better than nothing), and Aero is a pretty damn awesome spell (it's almost as strong as Fire 2 and ilk, despite being 1 level weaker, and runs off White Mage's good stat.) By this point, you'll want to keep White Mage as a permanent staple, because healing is just too valuable. Even if healing isn't as strong as you'd like, the higher level spells give a huge sense of longevity, and this applies all the way through the Shaman arc. Obviously, Shaman gets 100% obsoleted by Sage, but Sage is an Uber Super Awesome Job meant to obsolete all mages, so not really fair. White Mage also has some nifty status moves like Confuse, and at higher JLevels, stuff like Toad can be legitimate accurate status.
Final Fantasy 3 (DS): White Mage's healing got a huge boost here, and it's damage is better due to Item Casting being more potent, and being able to use Rods to cast Aras. Problems? Red Mage is a lot better this time around, so legitimate competition. You have to choose between stronger healing off higher MP or a job that can do significantly more damage and have higher defensive builds thanks to shields. Also stuff like Scholar exist to make Items better, and has a small stock of low level healing (...which doesn't replace white Mage, make no mistake, so you could totally skip this!), and all that. Devout is...basically White mage plus; they tried to make it have a flaw relative to white mage by getting less Low Level spell charges, but seriously, whose going to care about more Cures and Curas when you'll never use anything below Curaga in-battle, every Boss Fight restores your MP so the Cure and Curas you have for Out of Battle healing are meaningless extras on White Mage, etc. It has competition with Sage, who has less healing but has something approaching offense, and a consistently built Red Mage is surprisingly potent, but Devout is definitely a job you'll want to seriously consider using just for healing purposes against the endgame arc.
Final Fantasy 4 (2D versions): Rosa and Porom are basically interchange-able here. In original versions, the two had no overlap, and in Advance version, the difference is basically "Rosa has more HP, Porom has higher magic stats, and better equipment" leading up to essentially "face it, you want one of these characters in your team...though not both, that's probably a bit redundant." That aside, how are they? Honestly, I've always felt the Healers in FF4 were a bit lackluster until Curaga is gotten. Part of this is the section where Cure would be good, Cecil's basically unkillable, and the other characters are so squishy, healing doesn't go very far. Cura from Rosa should be great when you first get it, but it's such a short section, you won't notice it. Porom gets Cure at a reasonable point, but she's high on the list of "likely to die" and then Tellah gets his large array of spells...off low MP. Then you lose Porom, and this would be the segment where Cura would be good except for a few problems, big one being your main healer is Tellah...do I have to say what Tellah's problems are? Rosa finally joins, but by then, Cura is starting to notably lag, she really works best as a battery healer. Curaga is when a spell finally shows up on a character you have for a decent length of time with actual stats to use it, that can keep up with enemy damage. From here, Rosa (and later Porom) is pretty competent at her job, and then she learns Holy, and thus gets actual offense if you don't mind blowing away MP. Oh, they also get status, which is cool except FF4 status is so unreliable given enemies seem to immune it so much. Protect/Shell are good early game, but lose meaning later on given the additive bonuses in a subtraction system, Haste isn't as effective it should be on paper though Slow is actually fairly good, and Reflect can be handy in a handful of fights...and Dispel is awful because some genius decided to make Dispel REFLECTABLE.
Final Fantasy 4 (DS): Healing in this game got hit with a major buff, to the point where even Cecil's in-battle healing can sometimes be meaningful. Protect and Shell also became way better, sometimes crucial (hi CPU!) because of a percentage damage reduction. Add in how Rosa has high Magic Defense due to high Mind stat and mage gear, in a game where Magic Defense differences are huge and Rosa's somewhat better...though they killed all her physical durability by the same notion and felt it necessary to kill her HP stat. On the upside, Pray is actually really good now, being % HP *AND* MP healing rather than a laughable free move. Downsides? Her status is worthless, outside of Slow, and her charge times can be a big pain. On top of that, Salve exists and combined with the Double Healing Augment, Rosa's more replace-able by someone like Kain throwing MT X-potions, despite the superior healing compared to the 2D version.
Final Fantasy 5: So remember how I said White Mage in FF3o had this issue of competing directly with Red Mage at first and is worse? Yeah, something very similar happens here but starts off later since Red Mage doesn't exist at first, and lasts way longer because it's not until World 2 where White Mage gets meaningful advantages. Honestly, White Mage has issues after early game for a large part of FF5 because Healing feels underwhelming, Red Mage can be an ample substitute while also having real offense (again, Offense difference between Red Mage and Black Mage is significantly greater than Healing difference between Red Mage and White Mage), and there's little incentive to use White Mage for skills because Red Mage gives you most of the same stuff AND Black Magic alongside it. Then you get to Moore, and White Mage learns Curaga, and suddenly White Mage is unparalleled at the whole "healing your team" thing. That spell alone really keeps them afloat, but they still get a few nice things later on, like Arise (albeit the existence of Phoenix mitigates this, but Phoenix isn't on a skillset with adequate healing so...) and Holy. So really White Mage is kind of forgettable outside of some situation-ally useful Level 4 spells once Red Mage pops up, then you get to Moore, and you suddenly really appreciate them and their skillset.
Final Fantasy 9: First off, no, I am not treating Aerith as a White Mage because she gets Healing limits. Got that? Good! Ok, FF9 is weird because you have two White Mages who are also Summoners...I'd focus on Eiko because she's clearly the character focused more on the White Mage aspect while Garnet is focused more on the summoner one. Heck, when you look at the two, 2 of Eiko's summons are support based (Carbuncle and Phoenix), and while Garnet gets magical nukes, except for one problem: I claimed FF9 has only 4 classifications and I'd be going against that to do that. The classification here is both Eiko and Garnet fall under "Healer." They have differences but in the end, you're most likely using one of them for their healing, which is really damned good in this game (Cura can actually last you until basically the final dungeon, which is about when Garnet finally learns Curaga, so the fact that she's behind Eiko on healing spells isn't a big deal), and they both have reasonable levels of offense, thanks to summons (and Holy in Eiko's case.) I guess I could cover their non-healing things...which suck. Might is a waste of a turn since the damage buff is probably better spent just doing damage outright, Haste, Protect, etc. don't last long enough and are single target, Garnet's status spells have accuracy issues, so really you'll just be spamming their healing and Life spells, with occasional offense tossed in. Another aspect worth pointing out is how FF9 Phoenix Downs really suck in battle, where as Life spells are significantly better, so the Resurrection element is even more meaningful.
Final Fantasy 10: Again, we have a White Mage Summoner. I'm going to focus entirely on the "if Yuna was only a White Mage" thing because her being a summoner is cheating. Also you can replicate that effect by sending Kimhari down Yuna's grid which is the White Mage grid. So what does Yuna have? Good speed, evasion, hates actually being hit with physicals, high magic defense and game best Magic. Her healing is pure ST (unless you count Pray, which works as a "Free Action for AP"), but it's effective enough, and Rikku can supplement on MT. Protect and Shell are very handy to have, and the Nul-spells can be useful when used strategically. Then she gets Holy and OH LOOK MORE OFFENSE THAN EVERYONE ELSE! Overall, despite having limitations prior games didn't have on White Mages, Yuna's actually very good at her job, and Aeons were basically just unfair overkill.
Final Fantasy 11: ...White Mage exists, I know jack and shit about it here...
Final Fantasy 12 Zodiac International Job System: White Mage gets all the White Magic spells which is kind of a really big deal. There's so many spells you'll want to cast from it like Protect, Shell, Cure series, etc. True, some other jobs get it like Knight gets Curaja, or Monk gets Arise, but to have all the necessities on one character just helps with the Micromanaging so much, and for that reason alone you'll probably want to keep one. They also learn all Green Magic spells meaning they get stuff like Bubble as well. They do look offensively poor though; no offensive magic until Holy (unless you count Drain), their only weapon class is Rods which can't do damage until late when they can use early Greatswords which is something, and yeah. They're a pure utility job and a seemingly very good one on paper.
Final Fantasy 14: The Conjurer/White Mage is one of your healing jobs, of which there are three, and most importantly, Conjurer is literally the only Classified Healer before Level 30, as Arcanist (class that leads to Scholar) is classified as DPS, so especially valuable for earlier sections (...ok, level syncing Scholars exist but shut up.) Compared to Scholar, White Mage's big thing is just having a lot of tools for healing; it also brings Protect for a long term buff, and Stoneskin for that artificial HP Boost, though both can be cross-classed, Conjurer gets credit for providing those skills. White Mage's thing is relying heavily on raw HP healing, contrast to Scholar which is usually Healing + Damage mitigation combo. Someone once pointed out the difference is essentially "White Mage is overkill healing, Scholar is a lot of bag of tricks." White Mage also has MT Healing which is good emergency move, but only emergency because pricey, and raises Aggro a lot and your healer is the last person you want getting aggro. For offense? Well, White Mage is better than you think; Cleric Stance allows it to sacrifice healing for better offense, it gets 2 DoT spells in Aero spells, it's water spell is free damage that cna piss off melee characters because it launches enemies, thus only useful when solo, and Stone spells are B&B damage spells. Holy is also a great AoE spell with high damage and Stunning everyone, but only worthwhile if you can hit a lot, and not good if you need resources since pricey. Overall, White Mage is a very effective Healer, though it's variety isn't as interesting as other jobs.
Final Fantasy Tactics: Priests or White Mages or Those Guys And Girls In White Hoods Who Wield Staves are...well...healers. The big thing White Magic has overall is Holy is the best Math Skill spell in the game! Also Priests are the fastest Mage class, but has the lowest MA. Cure spells are fine for ranged healing though Summoner getting Moogle mitigates the need for this, Raise is an alternative to Phoenix Down that restores more health but can miss, so it's not great for the whole "reset the counter" aspect, plus falters on low Faith units. That's an issue Priests run into in general; they're not effective healers on low faith.
Final Tactics Advance 1 and 2: I remember them existing and having healing but damned if I can remember how effective they are! Just listing this here because completionism.
Final Fantasy 10-2: Well, one quirk White Mage has is it's stupid easy to raise thanks to Pray counting as an action towards learning others. They also can't really do much else but spam healing, but hey, this is FF10-2; you put jobs that can do that on your Dress-sphere and swap according to what you need. What doesn't help, however, is the existence of Chemist, a class that can fill the same niche and generally does it better. Now I know there's a late game accessory that makes MP costs kind of die and thus turns White Mage into a faster version of Mega Potion spamming, but generally Chemist is just easier to use, and once you get it, you have little reason to care about White Mage.
Final Fantasy 4 The After Years: To be blunt, you'll want Rosa or Porom in your team in the 2nd half of the game because not only is healing really useful, but White Magic has a bunch of necessary assist spells too. See, Edward w/ the Item Doubling Ring can be a good healer, but he's only a healer. Kain and Ceodore get Haste and Blink, notable support spells, but they don't get actual healing, and none of them have Slow, another handy spell. White Mages get the best of both worlds, and have the resources to use them. Rosa vs. Porom is not really an argument worth discussing since, like in FF4a with those two as well as FF9's Garnet vs. Eiko, you'll want to use at least one or the other. There is a 3rd White Mage of sorts in the form of Lenora, but she's basically the Leonardo of White Mages (...odd how the names are similar) if Rosa and Porom were the Shinon and Rolf. She has lower HP, learns spells at a worse rate, and has to play more catch up, and even when caught up, she's still not good. SHE CAN LEARN BLACK MAGIC THOUGH! ...which matters for all of Aspir seeing as Porom and Rosa learn Holy before Lenora will get any meaningful Black Magic, defeating the purpose. Yeah, you basically just pretend Lenora isn't there and rely on Porom or Rosa for the late game stuff, because they're just better at the job.
Final Fantasy 4 Heroes of Light: Oh look, a job FF4HoL wasn't afraid to use the common name of! Anyway, White Mage's thing is basically "I can cast White Magic for 1 less AP" and that's basically it. It gets tricks that let healing spells work better, Hide which is a bard mode, and...you know what no one cares about this game. I could talk about Turkey Salad for the rest of this paragraph and no one would notice the difference.
Bravely Default: White Mage is possibly the single most valuable job in the entire game. For starters, White Magic healing is exceedingly valuable because there's really little comparable to it. You'll want at least one character in the team with a good Mind stat and up to date White Magic at all times just for that reason. Then you realize White Mage has a few other perks, a big one is Angelic Ward, namely a 1 slot skill that randomly halves incoming damage 50% of the time, which for the less math savvy people, means basically a 25% durability increase. Add in utility like MT Status healing with Esunaga, and Protect/Shell for some defensive buffs, really you'd be crazy to not be running at least one character with the White Magic skillset at all times. Generally speaking, White Magic is a good fallback for any character who isn't necessarily needing a 2nd skillset, just because the amount of utility it provides is invaluable.
Next up, I pick...yet another Final Fantasy 1 Class because we're not going on beyond that until it's all finished. ALL HAIL THE OG JOBS or something.
