Progression locks are bad

[MrCookTM]

Until very recently I didn't have one of those.

And social skills have absolutely nothing to do with the content being un-puggable.

Again (and again and again since people aren't reading), I'm not asking for the content to be made easier. It's fine that it's hard. It's even good that it's hard. But locking off the content after it is bad. All the social skills in the world won't change the fact that I didn't attack this encounter when it was current, and so now finding a group that is both capable of clearing it AND will take someone who never has is extremely difficult and it has nothing to do with social skills.

Having a group is the one main thing you need if you want any kind of success in fcob. And if you have one, clearing T5 and T9 will be your easiest task. You are stating that being in a FC that's kind enough to help shouldn't be required to begin with, but exactly that is what you need in current raid content: people to play with. If you were able to pug through T5 (which is easily doable by now, just recently had a one-shot with three ppl getting the achievement after) and T9 without effort fcob would be your next wall, because these fights aren't pug friedly either. No point to not put T5/T9 in front of it as a skill check, even for raidgroups.

tl;dr the hardest task in this game is to have a group of similarly skilled and dedicated players with the same schedule as you. If you don't have that, you can't raid the recent raid tier. That's where it is gated, not in T5/T9.

[technole]

Having a group is the one main thing you need if you want any kind of success in fcob.

*snip*

Yep, agreed. Not to mention current coil content is never in the Duty Finder for quite some time, and why a FCoB party has to gather at the N. Thalahan entrance point to enter any of the turns. Collaboration with people on your server is obviously encouraged, and required. But people who never get to experience this content when it's prime time don't always understand the gated aspect of this.

As for SCoB statics, I still see requests for people to form groups from friends list, shouts, and forums all the time lately. It can be a great way to get a newer FC/LS going as well. So I don't think it's that difficult that some people make it out to be, someone just needs to make the initiative.