Suggestion: Advanced Party Finder Tools
Let's stop pretending Savage raids is perfectly doable PF material, and easily doable without in-depth knowledge of game mechanics or technical terms.
Thus I suggest SE to research and design an "advanced party finder system", to make pugging savage raids more doable, and statics raids' lives easier.
This includes providing official tools to assist with some of the common hassles PF players must face, as well as further streamlining the PF queue system.
1) Raid Lead system
By default the Party Leader is also the Raid Leader. However, the Party Leader may also appoint another player as a Raid Leader, in title only. This player will be responsible to guide the party through the encounter.
There is no number limit to this appointment. It is possible to appoint all players as raid leaders. Thus this concept is a visual-only tool. For now.
2) Macro Tools
Every time players enter a raid, someone must post a macro, people must confirm their spots, and sometimes, the raid lead must rehearse it to be safe.
However, this wastes time, and frequently changing spots can make clearing a raid more difficult for players who rely on muscle memory.
The Advanced Party System should have in-built macro-makers, a light tool able to display common icons such as the boss, players, mechanics and other relevant pics of the current encounter, with basic visual tools and animations such as arrows, and is saveable and shareable similar to macros, seen and editable in real time by all party members the raid lead and party lead allows.
A "mini version" of this macro setup (without detailed pics, comprised of only lines and letter symbols) can also be shown in the party-finder queuing menu, allowing players to browse the intended strategy of a party before they join, as well as confirm their raid position besides their job position, upon joining.
3) Advanced Party Finder
This I am not too sure of, but it may be beneficial to design party finder more similarly to the queue system.
Specifically, to use smart-queue to match players, fil parties and start an encounter sooner without having to wait for more people to fill crucial roles,
To enable key mechanic and phase try-outs without having to do the encounter traditionally from start to finish,
To tag-ify common keywords and requirements into a system matched with basic player checks (such as if they have clear already or not), but can be attempted to also ensure fairness etc. while minimizing salt due to select word usage by the party leader, as well as ... personal terms and conditions.
4) Opt-in system for advanced tools and statistics
Advanced tools and statistics may not be for everyone (cough parse cough).
For instance, there can be an official version of parse, calculating not only personal player dps, but also making that into a chart, and also taking into account how much damage they take, how many debuffs they took, and how much raid dps they contributed via buffs.
Tanks and healer versions can also calculated how much damage they helped mitigate, or shield, instead of straightforward healing.
However as useful this may be it will not be for everyone. While some tools are straightforward and discrimination-free such as the macro-tool and position-confirmation, parsers and more advanced tools, if they are to be designed, can be utilized in ways that negatively affect player experience.
Unfortunately something similar to the mentor system is not the most ideal, nor tested and proven, nor most suitable form for this. But system-based checks can also be played. So I am currently at a loss at how best to encourage or enforce this.
So that's all for now.
SHb was a good experience in general except for PF raiding, for me. Which motivated me to think about how it could be improved. For now, the focus is on the topic of PF. Extended ideas such as how raids could be designed, should savage raiding be end-all of endgame content, casual versus hardcore etc. maybe another day.
I welcome additional ideas and discussion. Thank you for reading.