Introduction
I'm a veteran, penta legend, shield healer that is looking for a long-term group for future raids. I'm looking for a group that is neurodiverse friendly as I am easily overwhelmed/overstimulated. Due to my ADHD I sometimes struggle to maintain focus and consistency. However, that doesn't mean I'm a bad raider, I know my role exceptionally well and in the right environment I'm quick to pick things up. I take raiding very seriously and have a hard core raider mindset, but lack the energy and focus to raid hard core hours over a sustained period of time.
I'm a 37, male (he/him), from Florida. I've been playing FFXIV since 2010 and have an obsession with raiding. I've always played a female character named Minda, as well as couple of alts. I prefer to be called "Chompy", it's been my online alias since high school. The name has something to do with chained chomps from the Super Mario games, feel free to ask me more about that!
I want to use this space to go in to a little more detail about myself and explain my situation, for those willing to listen.
Jobs
SCH will always be my preferred job in most situations. Sometimes I like to switch it up and play SGE. For the last few raid tiers I've been playing SGE in savage and SCH in ultimates. Outside of raiding I sometimes like to play WAR and RDM.
So basically...
- You can always count on me to be willing to play SCH/SGE in any situation.
- I will only play SCH/SGE during savage and ultimate prog.
Characters
I have two alts, both raid ready on SCH and SGE. I plan to gear them up for 7.0 savage as well. I'm fully open to doing split clears!
- Minda Silva @ Sargatanas (main) [FFLogs] [Lodestone]
- Liale Sivra @ Sargatanas (alt) [FFlogs] [Lodestone]
- Qunara Sivra @ Excalibur (alt) [FFLogs] [Lodestone]
Minda, my main character.
Minda is a leveled and geared crafter/gather as well. I will provide my own gear, food, and pots. I'm not exactly an expert crafter so my ability to support others in the group might be limited however.
Schedule
My schedule is pretty flexible as I work from home. I'd still prefer to keep all my raid time within these hours however...
- Sun 3-11PM EST
- Mon-Thu 5-11PM EST
- Fri 5-3AM EST
- Sat 3-3AM EST
It doesn't hurt to reach out to me if your schedule falls just slightly outside of this. For the right group I'd be willing to go until midnight...perhaps later...though that would require some lifestyle changes on my part (i.e. asking my boss if I can start later).
I'd greatly prefer to keep raid sessions to 3hrs/night outside of week one savage.
Week One Savage
I have experience with week one savage prog, however the best I've managed to acomplish is a week two clear. One of my personal goals as a raider has always been to clear a savage tier week one. I am very much open to it and willing to take off the entire week from work. I'm willing to play at any time during week one and for any length of time, however, outside of week one I'd like to keep sessions to 3hrs/day.
Generally speaking savage has never posed any issues for me. When I talk about consistency and focus issues those all happen during ultimate prog.
ADHD & Autism
I mentioned being a neurodiverse individual earlier. I am both on the autism spectrum and have ADHD...which is actually quite common...that is having one drastically increases the chances that you have the other. I've known about my ADHD since childhood, I took meds like Adderall for it. I however only just recently learned about my autism.
I believe one of my biggest personality flaws is how personal I take it when people have a problem with my performance in game. This could be in the form of a snide remark or simply someone leaving the party after I made a mistake. If I make too many mistakes I dwell on them for a long time, and that in turn causes me to make more mistakes because I'm distracted by my previous mistakes. This usually compounds in to a extreme emotional low for me and I often look for ways to feel validated after that. I'm hoping that finding a solid group that values me no mater how many mistakes I make is a remedy to this.
Probably related, I learned recently that one aspect of ADHD is not liking to be told what to do. I think most people don't like to be told what to do but with me it can be particularly demoralizing. I've always found it upsetting even when the rationale part of my brain accepts it, and often times I dwell on how much it upsets me, it becomes a distraction. My best advice for dealing with this in situations where I need to be told to do something...phrase it something like "have you considered doing X?"
With ADHD there is a constant need for stimulation. It's a very fine balance however, since I can also be overstimulated. Meeting new people is very stimulating but it doesn't take much for it to become overstimulating. New content is stimulating as well, savage prog always goes quickly so there is constantly new stimulating content to do. Ultimates however are a slow grind and become less stimulating after a while. When I'm understimulated I'm less focused and less motivated. I think this is the source of my consistency issues over the years.
Finally, due to meeting new people being overstimulating it's likely that it'll take me time to open up to people.
History
This will be somewhat long winded. I've been playing since 2010 so there is a lot of history, despite that this is still extremely abridged. Some might find this interesting, but you by no means have to read all this to get to know me.
1.0 in to 2.0
The very first screenshot that I ever took.
So yep, I've been playing since the open beta of 1.0. Back then the game was basically unplayable but it had a few ideas that really kind of captivated me.
I met my very first static in 1.0...Hidden Element. We accomplished so much together...including the ellusive Rivenroad (Hard) fight. Well...actually I didn't make the cut for that one, they took someone else... but I made my own group and with some help from the Hidden Element crew I managed to secure myself a victory.
When 2.0 launched I immediately fell in love with SCH. I already suspected I would love it because it combined two things I already liked... healing and pet jobs.
I stuck with Hidden Element until The Second Coil raid tier. My dad had alzheimer's and dementia and he was starting to need a lot of extra help, it was a really tough period of my life. I still wanted to try and make it work but the leader insisted that I should leave to focus on that...in reality he just really wanted to play SCH...I still think about that one...was kind of scummy if you ask me. Still...also not wrong, and at the point all the people I really cared about in Hidden Element were gone.
The last tier of coil didn't go so well for me. I eventually found a group, and actually made a couple of good friends, but the group overall had some really hard core players in it that didn't like my performance so I was chased out. I was unable to clear T13, and didn't beat it until I could run it unsynced in Heavensward.
Heavensward
Group photo after clearing A12S.
Heavensward had some of the hardest savage raids we've ever seen. I unfortunately didn't have much luck during this time. I joined a few groups but none of them were really any good. I never made it beyond the 3rd fight of the first two raid tiers.
The final tier, Creator, was when I finally found a solid group. I stuck with them through Sigmascape and generally enjoyed my time with them. Unfortunately at some point a new player joined and he was quite toxic towards me which eventually drove me out. According to the leader I appologized too much for my mistakes and that lead this person to believe I made a lot more mistakes then everyone else. This might be partially why I tend to keep more quiet when I make mistakes these days...
Stormblood and Ultimate Fever
After leaving the last group, I started getting interested in running ultimates. I became obsessed with clearing UWU...so much in fact that I left my home server, Excalibur, behind and moved to Sargantanas to join a new group. Sadly, I ran in to a very similar situation with this new group, an extremely toxic player who ridiculed me every chance he got.
So I left that group, and after some struggle found one of the best statics I had every played in. Ironically, I was replacing a SCH who was underperforming. Something about that felt kind of gratifying, especially after the previous group exerience. It was a really good group, but we were up against the clock. SE was getting ready to create the Crystal data center and to do so was moving servers away from Aether and Primal. Half the group planned to let it happen and stay on Crystal. Fortunately we cleared with a few weeks to spare.
Solo Heals
My absolute obsession with solo healing. Those 100s are non standard echo parses...not really that special tbh.
Towards the end of Stormblood I started to become obsessed with solo healing savage. I'd sit in party finder for hours upon hours waiting to get enough people to try it out. The waiting was the worse part. Often times I'd wait 8+ hours only to get a few attempts in. I believe O2S was one of the first raids I solo healed, it was a pretty easy raid, people loved to parse it too.
When Alphascape came out though, that was my moment. I started running O10S and O11S over and over, solo heal. I became something of a minor celebrity, when people saw my party finders they joined, I suspect because they knew there chances of success were high in my parties. I had something like 70 solo heal clears of O10S and 20 O11S. While a lot of the reason I did it was to feel validated by the community, it was also extremely fun, and I'd love to do it again. I love accomplishing things in non standard ways.
I continued to solo heal in to Shadowbringers, Eden's Gate was the first and only raid tier I managed to solo heal every fight. E4S was very challenging and was a blast to pull off. Someone created a massive diagram showing all the situations we might have to deal with in phase 2...it was crazy!!
The last savage raids I solo healed were in Endwalker's Abyssos tier. P9S and P10S were pretty easy and I started using solo heal as a fun way to do my weekly reclears. Good times!
UCOB + Shadowbringers + TEA
I created a group comprised of regulars from my solo healing parties during Alphascape. We tried for several months to prog UCOB but we only barely made it past P2. When Shadowbringers came out we shifted focus to the next savage tier. It was a pretty good tier overall, the first tier I cleared week two. The group was more than good enough to clear it week one but everyone in the group butted heads with one of the new recruits and it led to burn out before the week was up. We still managed to get to E4S phase 2 by Friday.
When TEA came out we discovered that our phys ranged player was actually a huge narcisist who really wasn't prepared for ultimate prog but would never accept fault for his actions and instead placed blame on others. Ironically...he got replaced with an even more narcissistic phys range player. It was the first time I'd really encountered people like this, kind of blew my mind really. It ended up just being too much for me though, I disbanded the group, much to a lot of people's dismay. In hindsight, I believe disbanding that group was a mistake, they were good players, but the stress and anxiety of leading the group overwhelmed me at that point.
A new group took me in, one that was impressed with my previous solo healing achivements, and helped me finish TEA, having already cleared it themselves. With their help I cleared TEA on patch. I stuck with them in to the next savage tier but kind of started to realize that the overall vibe of the group wasn't really for me.
For some reason I decided to try making a group again, specifically because I was tired of waiting for hours to solo heal in PF. Recruiting people to a group for the purposes of solo healing wasn't exactly easy, but because solo healing wasn't the only focus of the group I did eventually find enough people. Interestingly enough, solo healing was a great way to trial people as it adds extra difficultly to fights people already know, it forces them to rethink their strategies. Not everyone was good at that.
Overall, things didn't go so well. I think I saw myself as a better player than I really was at the time and expected a lot from my static...they weren't really able to deliver...but I very much doubt many could. However, the real nail in the coffin was the shear amount of drama in the group, and that I was expected to address it all. I regretably...ghosted my entire static...it wasn't my intention for things to play out that way but I got so overwhelmed that I just need an escape.
DSR & TOP
My first TOP clear, thanks to some very kind folks who liked to do C41s.
After riding the high of solo healing I eventually had to face reality... I'm actually not all that amazing of a raider. I think I had this idea in my head that I was a hard core raider, but the truth is there was no shot I would have ever survived in a hard core raid environment. My struggles with DSR and TOP kind were my realization that maybe I should take a step back and reassess things. I don't need to be a hard core raider to have a good time, I really just like raiding....I love raiding...I'm obessed with raiding!
My first DSR group I had actually been with for a while, I ran the previous savage tier with them and reprogged TEA. We were all pretty good friends at that point. However at some point in DSR prog, I think around P3/P4, we hit a wall. They started counting wipes and determined that I caused the vast majority of them. I was never really able to come up with a satifisfactory reason as to why so I eventually left in hopes they could do better.
It was a pretty low point for me...however...I immediately had success while searching for a new static. While trialing for the next static I made progress in to the fight, I believe I saw P5 for the first time. Sadly, I still continued to have issues, but if I recall correctly my remaining raid groups were all happy to have me, just other issues caused them to have to disband. I eventually cleared DSR in PF...8 months to clear. Ironically, the original group still hadn't cleared.
For TOP I teamed up with my good friend Kynda who I met back in Alphascape while solo healing. We joined a static together as healers. I believe we managed to get to P5 before we ran in to trouble. We hit the wall again, and this time the MNK in the group decided she wasn't happy with our suboptimal play. Kynda will insist she's partially to blame for this but I really believe most of the MNKs frustration were aimed at me. This MNK had some real issues with the fact that I wasn't trying to optimize my damage (opting to play it safe instead) and took issue with how inconsistent my movement was during Hello World...which is probably fair but it was a pretty tough mech and we still were getting through it a decent amount. We both left the group.
We both joined a new group together, they were pretty great, for whatever reason though people started leaving one by one and the raid leader couldn't keep up.
After that I continued to run in to issues where my consistency was a problem. My success rate at P3 wasn't super great, and I was really slow to master the mech. After having several bad days in a row I left my latest static, I figured they wanted me gone. Considering they cleared a few days after I left they certainly did benefit from it. It took me another couple of months to finally clear, no static would take me at that point, I grinded it out in PF.
Some take aways from this mountain of text...
- I've been raiding since 1.0.
- I became a SCH main the moment it was released at the launch of 2.0.
- I've previously been in two long term statics, both for two years.
- I solo healed a number of savage raids on content including O11S and E4S.
- Ultimates have been a bit of a struggle for me... DSR took 8 months, TOP took one year.
In My Defense...
I've obviously brought up my consistency issues during ultimate prog. I wanted to take a moment and make a counterpoint...
I think when the going gets tough and groups hit walls they naturally want to find a reason for it. Often people want to narrow it down to one person in hopes they can resolve the problem when in reality it isn't any one person. I think I might have fallen victim to this. I think it's natural for healers to cause more wipes than others, they have a lot of responsibility.
I have never actually been kicked from a group, I've always left on my own, but this is usually once members start acting hostile towards me. It's possible in some cases I imagined some of the hostility, and it all links back to the personality flaw(s) I talked about above. In particular my last TOP static wasn't exactly mean or hostile but I could tell they were losing patience.