I don't look up fights in advance most of the time cuz it's fun to not know what's coming next. Not just in terms of mechanics, but moments hit harder if I haven't seen the visuals or heard the music before. I got chills the first time I heard Insatiable vs Philia, and I think the retroactive midboss theme for ShB should not have been applied to every midboss, instead just starting from ones after 5.0 like they did for later HW. Really sucked out the gravitas of hearing that theme the first time.

If I spoil myself, it's also kinda like saying I don't respect the devs to make a fight that'll be comprehensible when they throw it at me, or that they'll make a fight that deliberately wastes our time if we don't know what to do in advance.

I've been playing for years so I can usually tell what they're trying to communicate in an encounter, and I've always played this way because the community is pretty good about not spoiling things (some asshole ruined e8s for me in a random rubex group), but I get folks not having that luxury.

I also don't want any first-timers to feel like they have to look up these fights in advance because that's just perpetuates a culture more fixated on the destination than the journey, which may contribute to how we end up with more streamlined, unsurprising content over the years anyways.

I'm fortunate that I have a group of players that prefer to remain blind or allow others to for the more time consuming stuff.