The difficulty curve in the game has... problems...

[Issaella]

Then perhaps it is time to stop clinging to experiences in other MMOs and pretend they apply to everything?
Because that seems to be your real issue: you made some experiences with something that can losely be compared elsewhere and now applying it to something else without having practical experience and despite everything several experienced people told you and refuse to acknowledge that maybe different games have different approaches and that they can *gasp* even work...

So basically you are saying that I should take what you say at face value despite every experience I've had over 20y of playing MMOs. What you are trying to convince me of is 180* from anything I have experienced. I really can't believe you have seen people with no Savage experience PF clears in any kind of reasonable time frame or at the very most you could count them on one hand. Not without considerable help from a FC or multiple experienced players.

EDIT - I encountered one of you magical, "fresh prog, looking for help, advice welcome" PF parties a while ago and decided to keep my eye on it while doing other things. It opened with 2 people, after 45 minutes it had 4 people (1 tank, 3 DPS), it evaporated into aether when the 60 minute time was reached with 5 people (1 tank, 4 DPS) and wasn't relisted. So I find it rather hard to believe even finding a prog group to start from scratch can be done without a massive time investment of just sitting around and waiting this late in the tier.

Welcoming help is not the same as expecting a carry. I've seen more carries in clear parties than in practice from start parties - the people in the latter are generally very willing to learn and take corrections and advice to heart.
If you don't want to create a PF without extensive experience with Savage raiding that is your decision.
But don't assume others can't have success just because they didn't do it your way.

Welcoming and not having any idea what you are doing and expecting someone else to lead is absurd. Don't assume just because you've seen it happen successfully means it happens regularly or isn't exceedingly rare. Like I said in a previous post I can't even assume baseline competency/experience doing Unreal clears on my alt some weeks. I would assume it would be that x10 in any kind of Savage prog in the PF unless I get exceedingly lucky.

Except overgearing stuff does make a difference. If you are all in the minimum gear for a fight, yes, a couple of deaths can be a huge problem. If your group has more gear than the fight requires, though, then a death or two... or five ...doesn't necessarily preclude a clear.

Yes, there are a lot of pass/fail mechanics where it's instant death for the one failing; there are fewer where it's pass/fail where failure means a wipe. (P4S phase 2 is a notable exception, since you pretty much do need everyone up to do the mechanics. But P4S phase 2 is also, y'know, the final fight of the tier, so...)

...

Honestly, I can think of only really one mechanic in P2S where one player failing it mechanically can cause an instant party wipe: Predatory Avarice. Yes, there are places where a tank can wipe the party (by not being in the Coherence stack, or by dropping a tankbuster on the party), or a healer can do so (by failing to heal folks up sufficiently before unavoidable damage), but that's true in every fight.

Any death is a huge drop to success chance, multiple deaths mean you might as well wipe and start over unless you are outgearing it by 20+ ilvls from what I've read.

Just from memory of watching clear videos and looking at the wiki:
Spoken/winged Cataract - misjudge/misread = death regardless of gear (I have a hell of a time seeing the head orientation to the body in normal)
Predatory Avarice - Misjudge = guaranteed wipe, regardless of gear
Channeling Overflow - Not fast enough to find your partner/off even a little = 2 guaranteed dead regardless of gear.
Kampeos Karma - mistake = wipe, 2 hits are not survivable at any gear level
Tainted Flood + Channeled Overflow - mistake = wipe regardless of gear
All of those are repeated, most of them in combination, any failure at minimum = death, more likely a wipe.

So assuming all that, how exactly does overgearing at all help to have an easier time with the mechanics? The only thing is seems to help with is unavoidable damage. The avoidable damage is such that most if not all mistakes mean death/wipe regardless of gear level. So again, even a single mistake on any one of those over a 15 minute fight reduces your chance of clearing to virtually nil.