OP I can relate to an extent - it's been a journey for me to find some friends that are either at my specific level of play or genuinely don't mind going along with the things I'm comfortable doing and the fact that my boyfriend doesn't want to do anything harder than an expert roulette doesn't help. He's grown towards crafting and gathering (and taking breaks from the game) so now the joke is that I've become his personal Kurenai - he supplies me with nice things to dress up in xD

All I can say is there is a reasonable amount of content out there for those who look for it. While most of what you've said is true there are a lot of spins to be put on things like the EXs/24mans/early Savage tiers. Personally when I expanded from just healing to playing RDM as well things became more interesting for me - it breathed new life into things that otherwise felt stale. Tanking things is even more of shock to my system - I haven't tanked anything really difficult but I am working my way up to it slowly. Point is expanding your horizons in terms of playing other classes and learning fights on them can be a cool, refreshing experience.

Also, frankly, a lot of my friends parse. Trying to beat previous dps numbers/each other on a given fight gives it a bit more longevity. Each time we do Ridorana one friend and I go in with him on SAM and me on RDM. I'm more geared than he is so it's essentially a fair fight, we scramble first off to see if either of us can be first in dps for any of the bosses and also to see if we can beat each other. I know competition isn't for everyone but it works for us and makes something kind of repetative into a new, fun thing. Plus talking crap to each other in Discord is fun.

Overall I feel your pain. Were you on Aether I would offer to have you come with us for weekly o5s/o6s runs.

As an aside - to me personally I find it really amusing how many people like to claim that everything shy of X is easy. Difficulty is entirely subjective. I did Trial Roulette on WHM yesterday and got Tsuku normal and by the end the only people who hadn't died to (in my opinion very easy) mechanics were myself and the PLD MT. No bonus message.

For those people Tsuku normal is challenging. Just because I don't find it so doesn't mean it isn't hard for a large group of people and dismissing someone's request for more content in their comfort zone is no different than a casual player laughing at hardcore raiders complaining the recent Ultimate changes - that content isn't there just for your amusent. Some people really like it and find it entertaining. I'm sorry that isn't you but popping into a thread to say "its all midcore " just says to me you don't care about anyone else's experience with this game. Your sub won't keep it running alone, remember that.