I like to propose a new idea for allowing more players to access Savage Raid Content.

[Kaliesto]

Some people noticed this that lately Savage Raids are turned into exclusive clubs, and become a place of culling out new players trying to access that content. Rarely I've seen practice groups, but people don't seem to have the patience or willpower to go all the way to completely learn it, and this is due to the difficulty they're not used to.

To put a end to a abusive player culture and allowing new players to be more at ease when playing savage raids, what I propose is creating a Practice Raid of a Savage Boss BUT with normal or hard mode damage and stats. The penalty is you will not earn any rewards for doing this raid, but you get the chance to actually see the content (like Neo Exdeath, and God Kefka) and actually learning it without the fear of getting constant instant deaths that savage raid tends to offer.

I feel like this would be the more efficient way to train a team instead of forcing players to die hundreds of times in Savage Mode, and putting a end to clubbing the Savage Content. I hope I can get Yoshida to chime in on this since I'm really trying to help the players here to access more content.

[mosaicex]

Savage mechanics are tuned with savage damage level in mind, things like Ultima/Forsaken into Heartless Archangel into Path of Lights simply doesn't work without the damage they're tuned at. If you lower it down then will people still do mechanics as they are intended, or will they ignore it like the usual, learning nothing?
And what of insta-wipe/death mechanics? Even with lower damage it still won't prevent players getting blasted of the train or failing adds entry, or an insta-wipe from Rot.
Besides, a lot of mechanic in normal raids are already just toned down version of Savage counterparts.
Savage are more accessible than ever right now due to lowered difficulty for early fights. I've seen more interest in two SB savage any previous raid tiers (although that's obviously due to cross-server PF mostly).

[Kaliesto]

To answer your questions, what trips a lot of people up when playing savage raids that mechanics become expanded or added so it ends up in a lot of deaths despite youtube videos or getting advice from their teammates as you can never predict if your team is going to be well synced or not (thus why Static groups exist, but not everyone can schedule). Unfortunately this causes some parts of the team to leave the raid because they don't want to waste another 10-15 minutes trying to beat the boss, and messes up the whole thing. I can't tell you how many times savage groups ended up getting disbanded because not a lot of people have the patience to put up with it even when it is a practice group (to my surprise). Basically I'm proposing to have players have their time well spent when doing a practice version of a savage raid, so their future teammates are less likely to drop out during the real thing.

Wish I can answer more without double-posting, the character limit on here is abysmal.

[mosaicex]

...Wish I can answer more without double-posting, the character limit on here is abysmal.

You can edit the post to bypass 1,000 characters limit.

Back to the topic. Say, if they lower the damage, what will it accomplish? In Kefka, for example. If you lower Hyperdrive damage you ended up with exact same thing in normal version, which doesn't teach the tank anything about using Immunity + swapping to deal with them, or stacking cooldowns for one you can't. Same goes for healer, if you lower the damage then you still won't prepare them for actual continuous high raid-wide burst damage, which are abundant in savage fights. WHM still won't have any reason to use Plenary Indulgence, or well timed Assize, or AST to prep their Earthly Star properly ,etc. DPS still won't touch their mitigation skill such as Feint or Addle. You could say damage level is part of mechanics.
It's safe to take Head On head-on in normal mode, which is not the case in Savage (unless you're preparing to deal with it specifically). It could be second box, third box, or even at the end of train depending on how well your party prepared for it.

I see where you're getting at but I don't think it'd really work, not anymore than what current normal raid accomplished. It could even potentially cause more harm than good by making players underestimating the actual mechanics. I think it's also easier to have players know that "oh this thing killed me because I didn't do this properly" than having to explain that "oh, that thing WILL kill you if you don't actually do that properly".

If you can bring up some examples of mechanic you'd like to see toned down and still somehow retained their savagery(as to teach players that doing these mechanics are still important) then I'd really appreciate it.

[ZephyAlurus]

I still think even if you removed say enrage, or damage numbers of the boss. There's still going to be mechanics that are a lot harder to deal with in Savage, if you nerf those too, it's basically normal mode. It's not like there's additional stories and if you really want you can watch the videos of Kefka and Neo Exdeath. The point of savage mode is to provide people with additional challenge because they're yearning for it.

[CienFleur]

I agree with OP

This will be great to have