I spent 7 hours today in a dozen party finder groups for P9S and not a single one of them made it past the Levinstrike mechanic. They all silently disbanded after a few to a dozen wipes on said mechanic. In contrast, P5S took me about 4 hours in PF on the first week before I got a clear and P1S took 2 hours.

I don't think a mechanic like Levinstrike has a place in a first turn fight like P9S (even the infamous devour from P5S had a higher allowance of deaths before a wipe). I never had a problem doing the mechanic, but the odds are someone else in your party of 8 will and a single failure will result in a wipe. It's not a mechanic that people can really progress on or learn before it just explodes and goes to a black screen and the normal mode fight doesn't even have a version of the mechanic with training wheels to try and teach people. I think it's going to have an extremely negative effect on people newish to the game who want to try savage for the first time and have a detrimental impact on the amount of people playing the game and willing to do savage in the future.

Besides Levinstrike mechanically it's extremely simple and boring. Dodge a cleave, proteans, partners, healer light party stacks, the same Behemoth meteor mechanic all the way back from ARR, yada yada yada. I almost feel like said mechanic was added to make a rather boring and uncomplex fight "more interesting".

I'm going to have to think long and hard whether or not this raid tier will even be worth the energy and if my time will be better suited doing other things instead.

But please, I'd love to hear everyone else's experience so far and opinions on the topic.