Rescue is Griefing

[Packetdancer]

We need the option to choose if a Healer can cast Rescue on us.

Just give me a /rescueoff so I can toggle wether or not I can be rescued

Rescue should be opt in or opt out and I don't get why the idea of giving players the choice to be rescued or not got people frothing at the mouth.

As I have said in many (many, many, many) other threads...

Rescue is a janky tool at the best of times; even when I know it will save someone, I often don't bother trying—at least on the first pull or two—because half the time Rescue goes off after it should, and sometimes that's a tiny bit too late. And yeah, it's jarring and sometimes embarrassing/annoying when you get Rescued.

Despite that, it is frequently the only option I have for saving people. And if I do not use it, I am going to be out 2400 MP (unless I'm on WHM with Thin Air off cooldown) as well as either my Swiftcast or 8 seconds of cast time.

It is a terrible tool, but it is also the only tool SQEX has given us for those scenarios.

And if in addition to the janky timing and behavior, there was a solid chance that Rescue just would not work, I know that I personally—and quite a few other healers—would simply not use it. Which would be, functionally, equivalent to removing Rescue.

So if it's a choice between a 'disable toggle' on Rescue that makes it useless or actually getting rid of it—the latter option at least is likely to have SQEX giving us some other tool to use.

If Rescue needs to go, then actually get rid of it so there's a chance of getting something useful in its place. Don't kill it, remove all the organs, and then prop the taxidermied corpse up in a chair and go "Look! Rescue's still here! You don't need a different tool; you still have this one!"

Because, you want to know a secret? Most healers don't like Rescue. It is, as I said, janky in the best of circumstances. We only hold onto it because it is the only option SQEX has given us to save people in many situations.

If people approach this not as "Rescue is terrible, healers are trolls, we should take away their one tool that can keep people alive in many of these situations." but rather come at it as "Rescue is a flawed tool, let's brainstorm some better alternatives that can work to save people in the scenarios Rescue is meant to." then I promise you, most healers will be your allies in that discussion.

I have, in previous threads, suggested multiple designs for a replacement for Rescue. The simplest is one where instead of moving someone, it puts a buff on them for, say, 15 seconds. If they drop below 1 HP during the time they have the buff, they instead are rocketed to the healer's side (for those 'the arena is vanishing' or knockback scenarios), left alive with 1 HP, and given the Brink of Death debuff (e.g. the one you get from a double-rez).

Under that design, if the person did have a plan to get out of the bad, then hey, the buff drops off and nothing happens; no debuff, no being moved to the healer's side. If they did not have a plan to get to safety (or executed that plan poorly), the healer is at least not out 2400 MP and potentially 8 seconds of slow-casting a rez. The Brink of Death debuff means you can't cheese it ("Look, an extra tank invuln!") without consequence.

And the ability only fires if the person was going to die; if they want to try to complain that they were moved against their well... well, if it went off, they would've been dead without it. Meaning they would still have ended up where the healer is standing by virtue of that being how rezzes work; you show up where the healer who raised you is standing.

This is, of course, far from the only possible replacement you could make for Rescue; it's just a relatively simple one, and demonstrates how you could make an ability that it would be difficult to use for trolling. (After all, if it goes off, it means that if it hadn't gone off the person would've otherwise been dead.)

Come at the discussion from that angle, and I can almost promise you that you will meet much less resistance from healers.

(Not, of course, that SQEX is likely to make class/role balance decisions based on forum threads regardless, but still.)

Rescue isn’t god modeing. If it is, then simply playing a healer is god modeing because healers determine if you live or die.

I feel like this merits quoting Josh Strife Hayes, as regards MMO healers: "You're all sacks of hitpoints, and I'm god; never forget that!"