I like savage in principle, having done it since the beginning of shadowbringers and watching it progress. But this last savage and a couple of the EX fights sort of got to the point that personal responsibility is ending up wiping the group rather than just punishing the individual and making the fight harder.

Shadowbringers fights were about as hard at the start but gearing up over the weeks made things easier even on e12s with points where the group could easily get killed off. With the way the difficulty progressed across the tiers this expansion, it was like devs decided that since they simplified the jobs they needed to push the difficulty on the fights themselves, so now there are way more cases where a screw up is a one shot on the tank, or a single person doesn't do a mech and the entire group dies off or struggles only to die a minute later.

This also increased the gap between normal and end game content even further than it was in shadowbringers, which already was showing some signs of the divide. Yes, mitigation matters MORE in this expansion than the last one, but this theme didn't do much to normal and did way too much to savage.