Rescue is Griefing

[Packetdancer]

Keep in mind also that you're only saying that, that it's a part of our job as healers to do so, simply because Rescue exists. Prior to SB, this mindset did not exist. It was created only bc of the skill itself, concentrating responsability on the healer and making people forget that no, it's not our job to save a guy from going to the red puddle. They should know better, that's part of the game.

I mean, true, yes, but I feel like saying "people only believe they should use this tool because the tool exists; before the tool existed, people didn't think it was their responsibility to press that button in combat" is a tiny bit reductive. I mean, by that standard, I didn't think it was my responsibility as a white mage to put down the lilybell in endgame content back in Shadowbringers; I only think I should put it down before repeated damage now because it exists to be put down!

Except what you're describing is the healer's own job description: to heal missing health and keeping people alive.

The part I bolded is the key issue, I think; many people look at "this person will die if I don't Rescue them" and consider it part of that "my responsibility is to keep people alive". I think that's the main point of disagreement, basically.

But, rather than Yet More Arguing[tm] about whether or not Rescue should be removed... I'd like to ask those who hate Rescue whether they would similarly hate the hypothetical alternative I proposed earlier in the thread.

E.g., instead of Rescue moving someone, the person it is used on gets a short buff -- let's call it "Ruin Denied" or "Salvation", and make it 10s.

If, while they have that buff, they drop below 1 hitpoint (e.g. would die) -- and heck, let's include 'falling off the arena' in this -- they are instead left alive with 1 hitpoint and slingshotted to where the healer who offered Salvation is. Let's say this also functionally works like a teleport; they don't fall into a pit if they zip over it. They are also given the more severe rez weakness debuff (to avoid it being deliberately used to cheese mechanics without consequence, as "second Holmgang" or something), but they can also be given a couple of seconds of the "Transcendent" invulnerability you get immediately post-rez.

If they had a plan to move to safety and do so, hey, the buff drops off after 10s and nothing happens. No harm, no foul, the player is not repositioned.

If the buff does fire and move them to the healer's side... that would've happened anyway, because the buff only fires if you would have otherwise died. So you would've ended up where the healer is regardless, because that's how rez works: you appear at the spot where the healer was standing when they rezzed you.

"Salvation" is basically just skipping the 2400 MP and 8 second cast time portion of the process.

Obviously, it wouldn't work in situations where Rescue could let you position someone for a mechanic, and wouldn't let you yoink someone out of LB3 animation lock without consequence (e.g. the Brink of Death rez debuff). Though you could at least prevent the person in LB3 animation lock from dying.

Still, it would work for a great many of the scenarios where Rescue is used to try to save someone... and it would at least give healers a way to attempt to not have to spend 2400 MP and potentially 8 seconds of cast time (or Swiftcast) to get someone back up.

And by virtue of it being a proc off of a status effect, it would be considerably more reliable than Rescue is.

(Moreover, watching someone plummet to their death in Aglaia only to have them bungee back up and rocket over to the healer when Salvation procced would be at least a little hilarious to see.)

[VerdeLuck]

I just hate healers yanking me out of safe spots on crystal tower or into pits like on Dohn Mheg because they think it's funny. Give me a way to turn it off like other games like Dota do.

[Jojoya]

I just hate healers yanking me out of safe spots on crystal tower or into pits like on Dohn Mheg because they think it's funny. Give me a way to turn it off like other games like Dota do.

That can be reported as harassment. Maybe they'd think twice about doing it to a random stranger if they had to sit out the game for 7-10 days.

[Bobby66]

That can be reported as harassment. Maybe they'd think twice about doing it to a random stranger if they had to sit out the game for 7-10 days.

Legit how would a report like that work? Couldn’t the healer just say it was a miss click or fat finger? Seems like murky grounds to punish someone for something they cannot prove was done with malicious intent.

[Bobby66]

Hey healing is boring enough as is let healers have their once every 2 min for the memes button. Think of the healers.

[Kyu-Momo]

It should be optional whether it affects your character or not. I'd rather die to mechanics when I mess up then have to worry about griefers.

[Packetdancer]

There is something to be said for giving someone the right to fail. It's how we learn.

I think that’s where the disconnect happens, though. If someone saw a player take avoidable damage and now they’re going to die to the next raidwide, a healer saying “I’m just giving them the right to fail; if I heal them up they’ll never learn.” we would, most likely, think they are a bad healer.

(And yes, I’ve met healers who refuse to heal avoidable damage on those grounds; they’re hardly the majority, but they exist.)

Yet seeing someone stand in the bad and letting them die is presented as preferable, versus pulling them to safety.

And I would argue that the reason folks feel that way is not “death will help them learn”; it’s a justification, but if it were the real reason, more folks would think spot-healing avoidable damage is “coddling” players and “erasing their mistakes for them”. Or that using Esuna to cleanse the Doom-esque debuff in the first boss of the Dead Ends—the one you get if the Yuck Puddles clip you—is denying the player a learning experience.

No, I suspect the real reason is that almost no one likes losing control of their character. Being stunned, paralyzed, getting the hysteria debuff… heck, I know people who get angry at the confusion debuff with the spinning pointer over your head that changes the direction you run, as in Rabanastre or Vanaspati.

That Rescue removes control and is triggered by another player just gives a target for that frustration and ire.

Add to that the fact that while I don’t see Rescue misused often—though as the healer in like 60% of whatever I run, my sample size may be skewed given that I would have to be the one abusing Rescue—it certainly can be on a technical level. And even when used correctly, it’s janky as heck.

But still...

“DPS stood in the bad? Well, they exercised the right to fail, I guess! And I already rezzed someone, so they can sit on the floor and think about this teachable moment until Swift is back off cooldown in 20 seconds.” might seem the better alternative to Rescue in many people’s minds, sure. But if someone hits the person with Krasis and a Eukrasian Diagnosis that covers half their hitbar and thus saves them from death... isn't that also denying them the chance to fail? Does that mean that shielding them against that damage is—just like repositioning them—denying them the learning experience?

And I suspect as soon as that hit doesn’t kill them, folks are less keen on a healer going “Oh, took enough avoidable damage you won’t survive the raid-wide? No, I’m not dropping what I’m doing and wasting a separate healing resource just on you to fix your boo-boo; you exercised the choice to fail, now you can lay on the floor for a bit until the lesson sinks in (and I’ve got Swiftcast back).” That's not a teachable moment, that's just being a jerk.

I mean, maybe you don’t top them off in time between avoidable damage and the raidwide, because you had to whole party to top off and didn't get that chance to throw an extra individual heal their way... and so they die anyway. But even so it feels like, as a healer, I should at least try. Sometimes you have to triage if things have gone off the rails... but if you have the time, and the healing resource, shouldn't you throw it at the player so the raidwide doesn't flatten them?

Having some method to save someone in the “you are standing where you will die” scenario seems, to me, fundamentally little different than that spot heal to try to top them off from avoidable damage before the unavoidable raidwide; in both cases, you see the impending death and can try to stop it. It would just be nice if the method or tool to do so in the "standing in bad" case wasn't one that causes resentment, or at best disorientation. (Not to mention if it worked reliably enough that you might not just be lassoing an unconscious limp body to drag it to you too late to save them.)

So, y'know, a tool other than what we've got.

But if they get the temporary Transcendence invulnerability anyway, do we still need the teleport anymore?

If the effect is meant to work for saving people from being yeeted off platforms by knockbacks or having the floor vanish from beneath them, yeah; Transcendent doesn’t protect against gravity. (Or, for that matter, death walls. Witness using healer LB3 when folks have been ejected into the sewer water border of P2S or the spikes of P4S phase 1; they get rezzed, with Transcendent… and immediately die again to the death wall they’re standing in.)

But again, Salvation is just one possible example of a replacement. Not even necessarily a great one, as it’s literally something tossed together as an idea over a lunch break; there are almost certainly better designs out there to be discovered and proposed. This one just has the benefit of being very simple, thus an approachable example/starting place for discussion.

[Reinhardt_Azureheim]

Read a little through the responses, the ideas you bring are generally not bad, but to me personally it simply can't replace Rescue. As much as it carries the stigma of "you can troll with this", it has given me a lot of flexibility regarding movement when paired with my Co-Healer.

Example: Titan (Savage) has you spreading on 8 tiles (yellow marker) and follows up with expanding tile AOEs, with the safespots being diagonally opposite corners. The way I learned it to set up for the stack was to do the mechanic up north.

To save my co-healer movement and vice versa, we used Rescue to pull each other to the respective safespot (we each stood on one of those tiles). In Omega raids there were plenty ways to utilise Rescue for better uptime management as well.

In my opinion, the fear of trolling does not outweigh the benefits of Rescue and as I said before, if you remove Rescue we will just find new ways to troll. I've dropped a tankbuster on DPS many a times (it was a friend though) with Shirk for instance or dropped AOEs on BLMs. No "rescue consent" will stop this either.

[GoatOfWar]

When revealed in 2017 everybody said it'd be used for griefing.

It was griefing in Stormblood. It was griefing in Shadowbringers. And it's still just griefing in Endwalker.

Even in rare cases where Rescue has a real use, like rescuing dive3 into the stack in UCOB, it still ends up griefing because half the time the healer Rescues early, pulling the divebomb into the group. And for what? For nothing. Not only can you now skip divebombs entirely, you don't need 8 people for that stack.

The ability shouldn't exist if its only use is extremely niche in high-end content that the majority of players won't ever touch.

If you think you need Rescue because another player keeps standing in AoEs constantly, realize that same player could be casting Rescue on you. There is no skill check when you cast Rescue. Healers are not automatically better than other players just because their role icon is green.

I'm sick of healers tossing me off ledges, pulling me into AoEs, and ruining my uptime in casual content for no reason. Rescue is negatively impacting my gameplay. I have never had a positive experience with Rescue.

Rescue is like the most interesting ability in the healer's toolkit.
It's situational, but has a lot of uses. You could use it for melee uptime, for damage prevention, to reposition a tank in a dungeon mid trashpulls (great to reposition beginner tanks in iffy dungeons like aurum vale) and much more. I've rescued strangers on to boss mechanics to avoid wipes (Omega extreme immediately comes to mind) I do think they should give it a more obvious animation so it will become more obvious when healers are trolling. Trolling with rescue IS a reportable offense. But a lot of people won't notice you're being trolled because it's hard to see.

[Liam_Harper]

Just have to say some of the posts in this thread on the anti-rescue side have been hilarious. The drama and mental gymnastics people go through to try and paint something that barely matters as a game-breaking evil is impressive. I would join the arguments, but this thread comes up every month, logic is always ignored here and life's too short. But it's good entertainment nonetheless.