A request to review how SWTOR implements endgame raids, starring Group Finder

Introduction: Groupfinder: the savior of Eldergame
Endgame content right now is absolutely ridiculously exclusive to the guilds with prog teams who are gearing their prog raiders as fast as possible to compete with each other. Which is fine, because that's the design. But there's a problem with some aspects of endgame raiding that need to be addressed, especially in SWTOR.

We have countless guilds who are opinionated on class specs, and even full viability on specific classes. Either your class is viable as a DPS/Tank/Healer in the eye of your guild leader, or you aren't gonna raid. Simple as that. No amount of evidence you can grab from the top raiders on the internet is gonna help you convince them otherwise. Their opinion is law, and if you are someone who's out of a raiding job because your guild won't take you in, you've got option B. Groupfinder.

Groupfinder did two things:

• It allowed you as an experienced player to prove yourself, and your spec's viability. As a pug spot in a guild's raid night, or in a full pug group, this is a clean slate. You're given at least a pull or two to prove yourself, and even get some gear while you're at it.
  Spoiler

  Like that time in 2.0 when shadow tanks were "unviable", "worthless", and "likely to wipe the raid", and you would go in, fully statted, and reduce more damage and pull more threat than your juggernaut tank partner and shut the doubters up?
  Or that time you went in as a sentinel in focus (now concentration) and did so much damage you pulled threat off of the tank and shut the doubters up? This is what group finder allowed you to do.
• It allowed new raiders to learn how to raid, and maybe even find a guild. It also allowed guilds to find players looking for raiding guilds. Go figure.

Why try to convince guild leaders they're wrong when you can join a group that will give you a chance instead? And this worked. At least, in 2.0 it worked, before 16m queues were implemented.
Right now, groupfinder is broken for raiding with the current 16m implementation, as well as the choice between only two of the hardest ops this game has to offer (yes, even on story mode). This post addresses the main issue in depth, and pleads to review how you implement the eldergame, so the elitist bigshots who control who raids and who doesn't, and have a bigoted opinion on class viability (and are also very wrong), don't prevent half the playerbase from even having a chance to prove themselves.
Perhaps the main problem is its 16m implementation.

8m vs. 16m Group Finder
Low population servers have already seen how difficult it is to queue for groupfinder for 16 man (if it even pops at all). With the difficulty of the ops, and the lag in the new ops when doing them 16m, is it any surprise as to why? And if you're guild doesn't let you raid because you're "unviable", even after you practiced parsing for hours on that target dummy and can reach 3.5k consistently (keep in mind, you probably don't have gear so that's pretty impressive), you're out of options if groupfinder isn't working. I'm highly convinced it's because it's 16m, instead of 8 man.

The Case for 8 man
In 2.0, back when 8m was the way groupfinder worked, a guild could easily pug that one or two replacements, and, if they were new players, help them learn to raid and learn the fights. It even helped guilds recruit new players (or new players find guilds). The bolster helped bring new players into the raiding experience, without making gearing a pointless endeavor. The comms given helped new raiders (and experienced raiders) to get the gear they needed, in case they didn't already have it.

Heck, have a personal experience. When I started raiding back in the summer, I was very fresh. I had an operative healer, and a gunslinger DPS. The only way I even raided was with groupfinder alone, and that was how I learned that I needed to read up on all the fights (because I sucked.... obviously)
One night studying dulfy later, and parsing to get the numbers expected, I go into groupfinder and proved myself and found a guild that accepted me. This was only possible with 8 man, where you can be noticed by that group of 7 guildies. The rest was history. I was a regular raider, and a regular sub (because I was gonna cancel my sub if I ran out of things to do)

What exactly is wrong with 16 man groupfinder?
For starter's, there's no choice. It's 16m or bust. A chaotic group of 16 individuals, probably (in a low population server) who aren't even in the same guild together, and probably many noobs who not only don't know the fights, but also don't know their roles or class well thanks to the 12xp we had earlier.

Worse still, if you're in a low population server (or a server that's labeled PvP/RP, where for some reason everyone thinks that means screw PvE), you won't get a groupfinder pop with 16 players. And what if you do? Are your tanks new? They won't stand a chance in 16 man: They have to learn mechanics, their rotation, and hold threat against the 1 in 10 people that may pull more threat than them. And not just that, do you expect 16 pugs to have the fight explained to them and expect all 16 of them to follow directions? Definitely not probable. I don't know if that's how it is in the PvE servers, but it's horrible in the low population PvP/RP server. Feel free to speak up in the thread if you experience the same so the devs can see that this is an issue that needs to be addressed.

Both guilds I was a part of refused to do groupfinder to find a couple pugs in 16m. Perhaps this is the gambler's fallacy, but this is what I see. Back when 8m was how groupfinder worked, my guild did this regularly: there would be 5-7 of us and we'd pug the remainder and either see how impressive they were, or carry/teach them. It worked very well. In the summer, we did this 4 times a week for all four raids (TFB, SnV, DF, DP), for two straight months. It was an amazing system, everyone got to raid regularly, pugs were always finding pops, and everyone was happy. 16Ms are just too big to do this.

How exactly is 8 man better?
When we had 8 man groupfinder, the groupfinder raids were more manageable. You could have half the raid composed of experienced guildies who not only carried the raid, but helped the other four pugs learn the raid. Not just that, 8 man pugs were actually quite doable provided a couple of the pugs were experienced prog raiders who could carry the group (expected for Storymode, right? I'd hope so... that's what "Story mode" implies). It also, like I said before, allows new raiders to find good guilds, and to learn how to raid. Finally, if you're, say... a scoundrel DPS who enjoys ruffian, but you're not finding a spot with the guildies who think you're not playing a viable spec, you'll find your chance in groupfinder to prove yourself as a DPS or healer in the eyes of the pugs who you're in GF with, or the guild that picked you up for a replacement.

TL;DR
Raids suck now, it's almost like story mode became the new prog with "class viability" and guild leader elitism.
The solution is groupfinder, where players are given a chance to prove themselves, but it's broken with its 16m queues that never pop, and are impossible to complete.
The solution there is to make them 8 man, back to the way they were in the summer. That way groupfinder will actually be used.

Even if you don't re-implement 8m groupfinder, you should review how elder content is handled. Those of us who work our butts off on the target dummy are tired of not having a chance to raid because our guild leader hates our class and spec and the groupfinder alternative is too broken to be the plan B that we need.

tl;dr;tl;dr
That plan B known as groupfinder needs to be fixed so raiding becomes possible again for those of us who aren't in a prog group.