Rescue needs to go away.

[Packetdancer]

Think on this perhaps. If given the opportunity and swap of roles, do you want someone else (however "correct" it may be) to do the right move for you? Honestly and truly do you want someone else to grab control from you and MAKE you do the right thing?

By queuing into group content, I am implicitly agreeing to be a team player, and use the toolkit that SQEX has provided me to do my part to get everyone through the content we're now in. That includes things like "equipping your job stone", "turning on tank stance", "not just DPS'ing and refusing to heal anyone", and so on. Rescue is a part of that toolkit; I do not use it often, because its timing is "weird" at best, and can often just result in pulling someone to you after it is too late, and also people do not like it. But it is there to be be used, and in those few cases where I think it is merited, yes, I will use it.

And if I'm the one being Rescued? No, I don't like it; it's jarring and can feel embarrassing. But if they Rescued me to keep me alive and keep things moving smoothly, I personally also consider it justified.

Despite this, as I have said several times, if Rescue causes this much bitterness, then fine, take it out in the name of community harmony. But then give healers something in return. Something unique to healers, ideally. Preferably some way to potentially avoid needing to pay 2400 and slow-rez someone, which is what Rescue can be.

(In contrast, what you may recall I strongly objected to in the glamour thread you reference was the idea that people who didn't like the glamour being changed—and potentially having screenshots of their character in gear that they didn't feel represented them—should be mollified by having it be that if someone turns off seeing anyone else's glamour it turns everyone into the default version of their race/gender when you first enter the character creator; that way, it wasn't their character. Which I get was intended to be the "see, everyone wins!" solution. However, those default characters, generally speaking, tend to be very fair-skinned. And glamour notwithstanding, I found—and still find—the suggestion that a game add a toggle to make dark-skinned characters functionally "disappear" to be one with some implications I'd define as "maybe a little problematic", whether or not those implications were the intention. I consider that a wildly different scenario than "someone moved my character for me" in a whole bunch of different ways. However, that is not really relevant to this thread.)

I agree with the earlier suggestion there be a toggle to allow or disallow rescue (and other movements not initiated by the player themselves or mechanics, barring PVP of course). Then choice is restored and I have no further qualm.

Again: this is worse than just removing Rescue, because now you are either wasting time trying to Rescue someone who has it disabled—and this game has problems enough with server tick and weird timings, given how often Surecast or Arm's Length will just ghost on people—or just ensuring that healers never use Rescue at all (because they have no guarantee it'll work).

If it is a choice between some sort of convoluted toggle or getting rid of it, please just get rid of it and give healers some other party utility, rather than removing the ability to actually use it but pretending it's still here.

There is nothing healers can do that cannot be done by at least one non-healer, save snatching someone from the jaws of death. Red Mage and Summoner can rez, and (in a pinch) heal, if not terribly well. Gunbreaker can heal effectively enough to keep themselves and a black mage alive through the boss fights in The Dead Ends; I know this, because I have done it. (Heart of Corundum is a hell of a thing...) Bard can Esuna. Etc.

If Rescue is a point of this much bitterness, then perhaps it should be taken out. But then genuinely, actually remove it, and give healers something both unique and useful in its stead. Don't gut it, prop the corpse up in a chair, then point at it and go "Look! You don't need something to replace Rescue, Rescue's still here!"