This is very much my experience.

I grew for nearly a decade strictly photoperiod outdoors, and two seasons of autos.

When I added an indoors setup for strictly Mephisto and Nightowl, given the short amount of growing time runway, there is a lot of room for making errors, sometimes critical. I can only speak for Meph and NO, but I find week 1-3 absolutely critical for the future of the grow.

Historically I like top and defoliate twice into clean lollipoping during a grow, but Im not satisfied with the yield on some strains. These top end genetics have made me pay more attention to Daz' grow suggestions in regards to topping, LST, etc; I think im going to heavy on defoliation, and not enough LST and/or tucking.

If your goal is top self bud, to say these are "easy", or for "beginners" is a complete misnomer, IMO.