10 hours a week is casual??? sounds more midcore based on time.
No, 9 hours is what a casual group has to pull to even get through some of these fights right now. They have so many mechanics where if one person wipes the group does, that the extra hours are needed in order to get past those parts and to the points of progression the group is on. If even one person has an issue in p10s or p12s p1 it isn't going to matter how close they are to clearing those fights.
In eden tier it was doable to do something like 6 hours and still clear. It is absolutely boring and a pain in the butt, but it was doable. Even people who started a bit late on e8s were able to clear it before the final tier hit.
When my casual static started up back in June, most of us had crafted 640 gear to start with or NM items. Some like myself are crafters so I pentamelded but some others just melded the necessary 2 spots. We got tome pieces as they became available and drops. Most of us watch the video a time or two so we know what to do but we often have to go back to it anyway during raid and discuss where to go and what to do as we get to and through each prog point. We don't worry too much about dps until we see enrage. We focus on learning the mechanics and then figure out where our rotations can be adjusted to push out that little bit we need to clear. I don't think the static you're describing was really casual.
Remember the days when you could just PUG EX and Savage and have a decent chance of actually clearing the content?
Min maxing gear makes sense, crafted isn't expensive and at least in my groups over the years, we've just crafted it up for each other anyway. Pool together what you can get at the start of the tier with tomes and such and full sets cost next to nothing with a bit of teamwork. Materia is a complete non event at this point. Remember to pull it from your old set etc and you'll have more than you know what to do with.
As someone who raided with multiple world progression FCs and teams over the years, the only time I've ever spent hours on a training dummy was back in the tail end of ARR pre HW figuring out how to Embrace spam without macros. If a casual group is requiring you to hit purple parses then A) There's other issues with that group and B) That's wildly unrealistic expectations for a casual team.
As for watching videos, pro tip for that one, start prog before they are released, then you don't have to watch them ;)
you dont need 9h a week to clear savage. yeah sure you wont be able to do it week one ore two. it will take way longer, but who cares anyway? if you dont do ultimates on realease the gear is pretty pointless. at some point you will still get the clear.
the only thing i need the savage gear for is the next raid tier