Questions About Savage

Full disclosure: As of writing this, I have never raided Savage in FFXIV, save a single PUG run of A5S that didn't get past the mini-boss for failing the DPS check.

Intro
My raid experience comes from several years' raiding other games, but mostly WoW. The team I was with tackled most of the raids from ICC through MoP, and while we weren't a world-first or server-first, we could usually get a normal mode clear before the next tier came out. In all that raiding, while competent DPS was important, what always struck me as more important than that was my group's ability to coordinate and deal with mechanics, and avoid damage they didn't need to take. Pushing phase was helpful, but it was almost never the end of the attempt if we didn't; we'd manage otherwise.

In my discussions here, I've found myself at odds with a certain mindset in the community, where high DPS trumps high coordination. According to this mindset, a group seems to be considered to have failed an encounter if they don't push phase fast enough. While I don't deny that DPS checks are, in fact, A Thing (they very clearly are), the notion that high DPS is more important than good coordination is a little baffling to me. In all my time raiding, "low" (read: average-to-slightly-above-average) DPS could be made up for with a bit of extra coordination and strategy, and a player who output middling DPS but never died to avoidable damage was infinitely more valuable than a DPS who could blow others away, but died 2-3 times per fight.

Questions
So I wanted to ask the folks who raid a few questions, since I'm in the early stages of forming a static, and wanted to know what to expect.

• Do groups push higher DPS to avoid mechanics?
• Do the mechanics of savage fights operate in such a way that, the longer a phase goes on, the more dangerous they become, thereby creating frequent soft enrage events, thereby giving substantially higher value to DPS?
• I keep seeing the argument that higher DPS means shorter phases means less damage (which makes sense), but is that damage unavoidable?
• Can a very-well-coordinated group navigate mechanics in such a way as to not require extremely high DPS from its members?
• How frequently are wipes caused by failing a DPS check, rather than failing some mechanic(s)?
• What do groups usually use to coordinate? Are VoIP and traditional raid leaders as prevalent here as they are in WoW?

I appreciate your feedback. :)

If you can't do mechanics then it doesn't matter how much DPS you do. Sure tons of DPS is nice but doing mechanics is always first priority.

I think in this game hard timed enrages are more common but there are a few fights where if people die the boss gets a dmg buff and things like that. Generally no soft enrages aren't really a thing, the main value to high raid dps is just making the fight easier by skipping mechanics or just taking less time to do it.

I've only been in two raid groups one for gordias and now one for midas but the DPS of the members was never our issue it was people learning mechanics and performing them correctly that held the group up. ( or now finding members lol )

In Gordias the enrage was a hard nut. But mechanics too ;)

In Midas currently wa have not seen or got close to enrage in A5 or A6 when handling the machanics well enough. From my point of view, the Hummelfaust DPS check is harder than the bosses of A5 and A6.

In the current tier, you don't need top-class DPS for any of the fights, but you do need competent DPS in a number of places. Don't bring a player that can't beat the A8S dummy at i230 (or at least come close enough to make it with a few i240 pieces they'll get).

Most phases in this game are timed, such that the only way to skip stuff is to kill the target faster. Usually anything you might skip will just be repeats of mechanics you need to know how to handle anyway.

There are a bunch of mini-dps-checks in Midas, though they're more about planning and coordination (are people attacking the right things in the right distribution, holding a buff in some cases etc) than about hitting a high bar.

• Do groups push higher DPS to avoid mechanics?
  1. Yes
  
• Do the mechanics of savage fights operate in such a way that, the longer a phase goes on, the more dangerous they become, thereby creating frequent soft enrage events, thereby giving substantially higher value to DPS?
  2. No, Mechanics largely stay the same, and more often than not, repeat. There're hard enrage to every encounter I can think of, not so much soft enrage.
  
• I keep seeing the argument that higher DPS means shorter phases means less damage (which makes sense), but is that damage unavoidable?
  3. Yes and no, most of the time things like extra stack of debuff, heavy damage on tanks. There are however some minor inconveniences people would like to avoid having more of.
  
• Can a very-well-coordinated group navigate mechanics in such a way as to not require extremely high DPS from its members?
  4. To an Extent, the dps check is generally really tight, by the time the mechanics rotate a certain number of times, you'd wipe to hard enrage.
  
• How frequently are wipes caused by failing a DPS check, rather than failing some mechanic(s)?
  5. Mostly failing mechanics imo. When you are able to execute the mechanics to enrage, you're probably not far from the win. Granted you're talking about organized static, where people actually are aware of what they signed up for. In a pug, you could run into the situation of tank healer carrying a raid to enrage, and you'll know when there isn't any chance in the world this group will meet DPS check.
  
• What do groups usually use to coordinate? Are VoIP and traditional raid leaders as prevalent here as they are in WoW?
  6. Yes, traditional VOIP. There's probably always a raider leader role whether a group officially elect one or not, typically the guy who calls all the mechanics.