Quote Originally Posted by Colt47 View Post
Going to be frank, Savage is both amazing content and also the most questionable in terms of community health. It feels like a necessary thing to help justify crafting or pushing crafted high iLvL gear. The only reason I don't like it is due to the hard enrage feeling really artificial or out of place, which thankfully the game does away with by saying it's all in our characters head and not really part of the game world.

There's really only two ways to put a limit on a fight: Either a hard enrage that pulls the ground out from under the players, or finite resources at the players disposal to overcome the challenge. The latter would definitely be better than a dps check since typically a finite resource is accountable in the game world itself. It's very easy to tell if someone runs out of healing potions or if they run out of ammo. For DPS checks the only thing someone can do is check if people are getting damage downs or die repeatedly unless they have a tool to utilize for it. Plus even if someone did have a tool, the information needed to figure out why said person didn't perform can be a myriad of reasons.
The issue with entirely "soft enrages" like you described is the DPS themselves instantly have less value. In fact, it'd be better to bring a third healer or even tank simply because that gives you a larger pool to work from. Couple that with the fact healer kits are already comically overpowered and they'd have to design the end mechanic AoE spam in such a way that the boss just keeps dealing increasingly higher damage ala Brute Justice. At which point, what's the difference? After a certain number of stacks, Brute Justice simply deals too much damage for the healers to handle, thereby being a hard enrage. While a fun idea I wish they'd use more often, the novelty would inevitably wear off when every single boss has to follow the same format to ensure fights don't carry on forever.