Breaking into the Savage Elite
I previously posted about a lot of difficulties and frustration with getting duty complete in savage content. Although I was putting in a lot of time and energy, my efforts weren't getting anywhere mostly because 90% of that time was spent in queue. I could only find toxic ststics, and I really didn't want to raid with unfriendly people. So I changed my tactics. My biggest complaint wasn't wiping; it was not even getting the chance to play.
So what I did was I used my 70 omnicrafters and leveled up two alts (SAM and AST) and got them to i350 gear levels. Instead of starting my own queue and waiting forever I just pitch hit in literally every party finder I could that was doing the train. I got about nine straight hours of constant attempts in as all three class roles. I watched more successful players in their roles and emulated it when it was my turn to be that guy. Finally at the end of the night, I recognized early on a DPS was struggling to grasp the knockback ghost. With some hasty macro switching I ended up covering him instead and notified the warrior to use Holmgang (suboptimal I know), and finally got the clear as he was casting saintly beam. After getting that first clear I have killed it many more times, as the "duty complete" requirement really does open you to a higher caliber of players. Additionally, after that my progression has been much faster (with only two hours of attempts at O6S I got to wipes.
So, solo queue in party finder is possible, but you need to have multiple classes leveled to do it. You will die a lot but at least you'll get attempts in, and law of averages states eventually you'll get lucky and break into he elite crowd... and it's all downhill from there. I still think there needs to be more incentive to take on newer players, but for now that battle is conquered.