Quote Originally Posted by Ceallach View Post
No worries. Your points are thought out well.

For me, I guess it's less a matter of whether someone goes above and beyond the call of duty and more whether they're doing their jobs well enough so that victory is achieved and aren't necessarily idle. Like I've said before, I believe healers can and should use our attack spells when and where possible, but it takes a back seat to actually healing.

Using your reasoning, I could say a healer using Rescue to pull a DPS player out of an area attack so it doesn't knock out him/her would be a DPS gain. This doesn't mean the DPS should expect it (they should be trying to dodge after all), but if the DPS makes a wrong move geographically, backing himself/herself into a corner so he/she can't escape, Rescue would be a DPS gain for the same reason the Balance would be.
I hate to get bogged down in semantics but since we seem to be talking amicably now (yay!) I figure there's no harm in engaging a bit more. Feel free to ignore me if you don't want to continue our train of thought.

I would say Rescue fits into both of our definitions of DPS increases with different uses, though admittedly I think it's more in line with your view than mine.

If a dps has backed themselves into a corner where death is imminent and they are saved by Rescue I see that as the same situation as my previous PLD cover scenario - the dps would die without intervention but since it's on everyone in the party to best ensure everyone else's survival the Rescue is within the healer's base responsibility.

I don't think dps should expect it or rely on it (for a myriad of reasons, chief among them that Rescue is just not very responsive in my experience) in the same way I don't think dps should expect or rely on a PLD to Cover them in that same scenario or a healer to save them with a clutch Tetra or shield of some kind. The fact that it's nice that we have the ability to help mitigate the mistakes of others is nice but I don't see it as something to be relied upon. The goal should be to not put yourself in that situation in the first place. Anything anyone else does to save you once you make a mistake is a kindness.

The other issue I see with the Rescue as a dps increase accredited to the healer is that Rescue can actually be used as a real dps increase. It's rather common for healers to slot Rescue to yank PLDs back into melee range for the sake of uptime. While this dps increase may be hard to measure (with variance based on essentially how many GCDs are gained and then also what those GCDs are spent on) it is a gain that might be lost by using Rescue to save a dps who has made a mistake.

I guess ultimately I just think attributing Rescue as a dps increase is too complicated. The variables are too plentiful. Can it be an increase? Surely, but it doesn't exist in a vacuum like a flat buff or debuff does.