There's no middleground is why it becomes a problem. You want people to get good? Those that geninuely do want to get good have to curve toward it rather than spiking upwards. Alexander normal honestly does nothing to prepare the expectations of a typical player when stepping into Savage as far as the difficulty curve is concerned. Infact it sorta does both undersell and oversell the expectations imo; Fights are both aren't entirely different or interesting (1, 2 and i hear 4), and fights that become mechanically different and tuned to the point that one mistake at any time during a 9~10 minute fight will lead to a reset (3).
A1 to A1S would have if it weren't the fact that the fight itself is relatively boring and keeping everything the same + one more mechanic (resins actually drop resins).
A3 to A3s introduces new mechanics that would be fine, but the lack of curve to how highly tuned those mechanics are leads to problems of it's own. You're going to wipe the moment a lubricant gets through or a liquid gaol walks over a puddle, with no chance of recovery. That's fine and all for savage mode...but I wouldn't say it's the ideal range to slam as the "to-go-to" end game content versus catering to the 1% top players.
It's also where having a third tier of difficulty would be nice if it was the option. You just want something that's open to the majority of the player base, while at the same time keeping something relevant to teh high end (and if you're going to have to nerf savage, you're essentially taking the latter option away since it kinda defeats the point of it being ball-busting hard to begin with, if that was what they were aiming for)
And it's just on my own, but savage has gotten me so burned out on Alexander in general, that I can't be assed to gear up my alts with proto-gordian gear. It also doesn't help that the fights are so undertuned that people regularly expect to clear it while netflixxing or afking, pulling less than their weight intentionally otherwise.