I recently hit my first try at Savage content with Burden of the Father. In all honesty, I was really nervous to try because I've seen some of the conversations on forums and know people get impatient with newbies and mistakes sometimes. That, plus I've only just gotten the hang of Warring Triad on Extreme.
When I set up in Party Finder, I was careful to say in the description that while I hoped to farm for gear I was still pretty new into it. The team that assembled had some new people and some veterans (one in particular who didn't want any gear or mounts and just stuck around for funsies--undying love for that person omg) and honestly we died a lot initially. Didn't all know or remember the mechanics. By the time we got the hang of it though we were blasting through runs at around four minutes. Everyone was having fun and joking around. The tanks and one samurai were joking about how they tended to die in the final stretch while DPS spammed frantically and healers tried to avoid each other and everyone because Alexander apparently hates healers.
(We almost had three healers at one point. We could have driven that boss insane trying to split its aggression three ways instead of two lol.)
The last run, one member of the team needed a final page and we were all happy to help 'em out. We were having a lot of fun, the player was nice, and we'd gotten pretty efficient by then.
We got cocky. And then we all wiped once, basically got through by the skin of our teeth the second try. Took around 11 minutes. We were basically laughing our asses off in chat and occasionally screaming things like BUT THE TANKS ARE STILL ALIVE.
It was a really awesome experience on the whole, and I just want to say how grateful I am for the people who decided to jump in. Now, I feel reasonably comfortable that Extreme and Savage can be around the same difficulty depending on the fight, that they can both be a lot of fun, and that it's okay to take a couple of rounds learning mechanics.
For me, I don't mind dying or even wiping sometimes as long as the people around me have good humor and we're improving as we go. I was sincerely worried people would be pissed, and it was a relief to learn that wasn't the case. I'm excited to try Savage again because of this. Figured I'd share in case other players have been hesitating to try too.