Healers who rescue pull tanks into mobs.

[Eldevern]

As BLM I just wish I could spam Flare with an absolute defense shield

Hum? Yes? What? I exit? Okay

[Quintessa]

I got a good laugh out of tank busters not existing. I get what he means, but it was still funny. I wish they didn't really exist. Rake(common named tank buster), Rend, Ripper Fang, Candy Toy, Crippling Blow, Divination Rune, Frost Breath, Rime Breath(Some AoEs double as tank busters), Swipe, Swinge, xxx ton swipe(followed by a strong auto lol mini tank buster?), etc, list goes on, they suck so much it's easy to remember them.. The worse are the untelegraphed ones where you need to remember how many autos pass before it comes up.

[EaMett]

....

You're right that I don't really care, I just came in to say that at cap, an SS that ticks fully on your target is a better use of a stack than a lustrate (regardless of context). Also, that unless rescue is used specifically to grief, it's not a big deal. Just as whatever unpleasant behavior led to the rescue isn't a big deal.

[Gemina]

Not entirely sure if you're arguing that SS becomes worse than lustrate with diminishing returns from mitigation stacking (since SS vs lustrate was the original discussion). Or if you're just saying not to use SS or lustrate.
If it's the later, I totally agree buuuuut lets not forget that we can take that reasoning pretty far. Yeah, sure, if your tank knows what he's doing you don't need SS or lustrate, but if your party knows what they're doing.. well.. you don't even need to be there, they can replace you with a dps.

SS has diminishing return the fewer enemies there are, and/or the fewer party members it protects (assuming other members are also taking damage). However, my reasoning has very little to do with SS vs Lustrate, so much as it does SS and Lustrate vs Energy Drain.

Truth of the matter is I don't use SS in dungeons at all. I can't even remember the last time I did, but it was around the time of 5.0 release and SCH did not have ED. If you have to use Lustrate, then by all means do so; but SS vs Lustrate boils down to proactive and reactive healing. There really should be no versus there because both abilities are situational, and their use is warranted by different situations. Inside dungeons, there aren't too many situations where SS is going to beat out ED. ED causes damage, fills the fey gauge, and restores MP. It is crazy good utility.

[Goji1639]

All your argument as always amounted to is, because it inconvenience me so I want that option that only benefits me. I don't condone the actions of the toxic healers who abuse the feature, but I disagree with the suggestion of the toggle button.

So, say we get the toggle button. Does it come toggle off or on by default? Should the game explain the mechanic to new players and if yes, when? Can you toggle it on mid dungeon, mid-combat? This alone is already a nightmare in the coding scene. Things are never as simple as If __ then __ , especially in a dynamic environment. Say after a lengthy amount of time after the change is implemented. What percentage of players would need to have it toggled on to justify it as a spell that is worth putting on my hotbar, let alone a spell worth having? And if the number does not meet that set amount of percentage, should they just remove the spell?

I don't agree with the toggle method but I'm not opposed to trying. It just seems like a redundant path to take that will inevitably lead to the removal of the spell. And the argument that it's a "choice" is really ridiculous. It's an illusion of choice. If I said, hey turn this feature on for a free +10 crit. Who wouldn't turn on that feature? You're losing nothing from having it enabled while boosting your own gameplay however minimal it is. Even me, as an advocate for Rescue, would turn the feature on.. It's a no-brainer decision.

Most of what's useful about the skill seems to boil down to pre-planning and coordination. It'll always have a place in premade groups that want to use it to further optimize their teamwork.

In randoms and roulettes, however, you're right, I'd imagine most people will have Rescue turned off. The REASON is because in those situations it's mostly used to terrible effect, either incorrectly or as a means to troll. If it was more often helpful than not most people logically wouldn't turn it off.

The default setting for the toggle would obviously be to allow Rescue. People who find Rescue to be a burden on them will have to actually seek out the option to turn it off. That's the most fair way to handle this situation, since I can't report people for accidentally screwing up my rotation trying to "save" me from an AoE that would maybe take 1/3rd of my full health bar, while I still have defensive CDs and Second Wind available.

Obviously I could report people who force Rescue pulls on tanks, though this board specifically seems divided on whether or not that should even be considered abuse.

If you find that it's not worth having Rescue on your hotbar for the people in randoms who do want your help, even if most don't, that's your call. Forcing it on everyone to make it feel more important to you isn't the right way to handle this, though.

[Stepjam]

I think it's kinda rude to do. I'd prefer the healer and tank talk it out like adults, but I like big pulls so it doesn't happen to me when I tank.

[Packetdancer]

At this point it’s clear Rescue’s caused enough bitterness that honestly, yeah, just remove it. I find it a convenient tool, but it's one I use maybe once every two or three weeks. Admittedly, that was last night; someone died in Copied Factory, I rezzed them... and then the flight unit laid down the Bad across like 90% of the arena. DPS rezzed into that, immediately popped Second Wind (thus cancelling rez immunity), and since I'd worried that might happen—and there was zero chance of Sprint reaching us in time—I already had them selected, and immediately used Rescue to yoink them over to safety. Saved me (or someone else) having to do a second rez there.

But those scenarios aren't frequent; like I said, it's maybe once every two or three weeks I find a need to use Rescue to cleanse a Doom-type debuff off of someone or pull them to safety when they cancel rez immunity without thinking. (Or get one last person on the pad in LotA during Ancient Flare.) It's not a common enough occurrence to merit this level of vitriol and bitterness between players; if letting folks die in those scenarios is the price of ending this dispute, then let's pay that price.

I mean, removing it also means fewer things for me as a healer to worry about; I no longer have any way to ensure folks make it those last few steps to the pad in LotA, or cleanse the flame in Grand Cosmos, or cleanse Doom in WoD, or whatever else. So those are things I as healer no longer need pay attention to on everyone else’s behalf; I can’t affect them, so I do not need to concern myself with whether or not someone's doing a thing that will one-shot them. I just need to check after those things to see who died, and if I can spare the MP/time to rez them right then or not.

And if someone wipes the party by not getting to a spot for a mechanic on time, so be it. We can just run the fight again; it’s not the end of the world.

That said, this thread has me starting to think that Shirk actually does need to be discussed as well. Because that one’s even easier to abuse—people in this thread are discussing using Shirk to kill healers who annoy or inconvenience them, so it’s not like you need to rely on anecdotal "well I've seen it happen" evidence of whether or not people would deliberately abuse it that way—and has even less use outside of endgame raiding than Rescue. You can’t pretend it might be useful in Light Party content at all, because there’s no second tank to Shirk to; Rescue in Grand Cosmos can cleanse someone of Mortal Flame and save me 2400 MP for what would otherwise be a rez, but I can’t think of a similar place in any dungeon where Shirk can save the party.

This thread has basically boiled down to the fact that folks in general feel the possibility of disruption of play by an ability outweighs the definite but infrequent benefits of that ability's intended use. At this point I'm willing to accept that logic, but under that same logic Shirk absolutely merits a toggle to prevent it being used on you.

If you feel a need to do a tank swap in trials or raids, discuss it with your fellow tank and make sure you’ve both enabled Shirk use on yourselves ahead of time. Or go the simpler route: just remove Shirk entirely and make Provoke a lot more powerful. You could still troll by constantly trying to steal aggro from someone else in Alliance Raids and whatnot, but a) that already happens sometimes so it's not like that'd change much there, and b) you wouldn’t be able to amass aggro and then dump it on someone. In other words, you could be annoying but couldn’t kill someone outright.

And if someone forgets to turn it back on—or even a buffed Provoke isn't enough to do a tank swap—and it causes a wipe, again, not the end of the world.

[RmtumTugger]

I didn't even know Rescue was a thing until I got raised right into a massive AOE and before I reacted one of the healers pulled me over to where the rest of the party was huddling. Surprised the heck out of me.

[Goji1639]

I wouldn't mind a toggle on Shirk either, but all of these comparisons to other abilities are off-base.

Rescue literally stops everything you're doing, takes control of your character and displaces you. In a game that's all about strict rotations and positioning that's probably the most annoying, intrusive thing one player can do to another. It's not to say other abilities can't be obnoxious when used poorly, or with poor intentions, but Rescue really is in a class of it's own. It's an entirely different beast.

I want a toggle because it really is THAT annoying to be yanked out of what you're doing and placed somewhere else in a game like this. If people feel the same way about Shirk then it's certainly a discussion worth having.

[Packetdancer]

Rescue literally stops everything you're doing, takes control of your character and displaces you. In a game that's all about strict rotations and positioning that's probably the most annoying, intrusive thing one player can do to another.

I personally have seen jerk tanks troll with Shirk in Light Party content more than I've seen Rescue misused. It still hasn't been often—I'm fairly sure it's less than ten times total since I came back to the game last August—but I've almost never seen Rescue even used in Light Party content at all. (I grant that like... 64.7% of the time the healer in a Light Party I'm in is me, so this does potentially skew my personally-observed data set.)

Rescue may be intrusive, but it does have an intended use even outside of raiding (and a use which sometimes is the difference between "welp, they died" and "whew, that was close"). It's clear that people don't like that use—and I'm going to try to take that to heart and just let folks stay in the bad/run off with the stack marker/etc. in the future rather than disorient them by pulling them to safety in the last couple of instants, because it's not the end of the world if we die or the party wipes—but there is an intended use which falls within what a healer is supposed to be doing in a party (i.e., keeping people alive).

In contrast, Shirk is potentially a 'vaporize' button for killing people in your own party; that's also pretty annoying and intrusive on your gameplay, and there's far less justification for the skill to even exist outside of endgame raiding.

tl;dr: Rescue has a potentially useful intended purpose which some people vehemently dislike, but you can see a place for it in what the devs wanted in game design/balance. In easily 95% of content, Shirk can literally only be used to troll other players, so there's absolutely no rational reason it should be even possible to use it outside of endgame raiding where you need to tank swap.

Edit: I would honestly prefer just removing Rescue to a toggle, personally. If it's a toggle, then I always have the possibility that if I select someone and use Rescue it just won't do anything if they have the toggle on. In which case, I've just wasted time I could've spent on something else. If Rescue's gone, I know that I have no options for saving someone there, so I don't even need to try it; if they die, they die, and I'll rez them when I can.

(And moreover, if Rescue's gone and I have no options to save someone in those situations, it saves on party chat blaming a healer for not pulling someone to safety. Which actually happened in Grand Cosmos the other week, when I didn't pull a SAM over to furniture to get rid of Mortal Flame and got yelled at in party chat by the SAM because "a good healer would see I wanted maximum DPS uptime and save me having to sprint across the room". I mean, the issue here was not Rescue but that the SAM in question was kind of a jerk—if he wanted that DPS uptime strategy he could've just told me ahead of time—but if Rescue's gone, it'd have been his problem and not mine.)