I think a little of column A and a little of column B. Whilst you can set certain requirements and expectations in a PUG, you'll likely always have to account for varying levels of understanding & experience. There's a level of rolling the dice. But I do think it'd uncool if say a PF said "must be able to do 'x'" or "must be up to 'y'" and you join despite not meeting that requirement, because there are varying levels of progression and some groups are further along than others and people might be going for certain strats.

But of course there is a disadvantage to using PF and forming PUG's, you have less quality control, and I think it's better to accept than fight it (maybe help people improve rather than disparage and maybe they'll pay it forward), because hey, those people want to clear content too and they're using the right tools to do it and some legitimately want to get better at it. There is a bit of a jump in difficulty between normal content and EX or Savage. Case in point, I played AST like a pseudo-WHM or pseudo-SCH until I took it into Misera and found I wasn't playing AST correctly, because it had been fine until that point, so my heals and damage output was low until I corrected it. Prior to that, I had only used SCH or DNC.



Expecting a tighter ship however, this I feel is more the benefit of a static, because you have the consistency of players for a start and also you can vet a little more and you can run it to the standard you like. I know a friend's static will run savage content with potential recruits to see how well they work together and that they can keep up with what the need, which was especially important for when they did Ultimate.