Is it reasonably possible to clear savage without Synced Burst windows?

[Gurgeh]

While it CAN be depending on performance, at that point hitting your raid buff every 120s should really not pose any issue. Drifting is fine so long as you try to pinpoint where its happening and do what you can to mitigate it, but you should never willfully not hit your raid buff CD in time with the party if it can be helped. They even added loud and unique sound effect to them as a "hey dude, the party is buffing, join in!" last expac.

Again interesting. So it is sufficient that everyone hits their buffs/cooldowns at the same time, but it doesn't really matter much if they are syncing their bursts/gauges etc with those buff windows?

[chip793]

I mean with how job rotations are structured, there really isn't an excuse to not have at least something to cram into the buff window. The most complex it ever really gets is with jobs like DRK/SGE/SAM where you want to hold onto a charge for certain actions to slot two of them into the buff window for much more potency. Regardles of party structure, you're bound to have at least one or two raid buffs and it's never a bad thing to capitalize on them and even if the whole party are "selfish" jobs, it's possible to clear content if they all hit their buttons on time.

The biggest DPS loss will always be dying. Damage downs suck, especially in fights where they're just the flat 50% non-stacking variant. But they're nowhere near as punishing as a bunch of missed GCDs.