The oldest and best advice for raiding in FFXIV is: "have seven friends to raid with or don't bother".

I've personally never found a more inaccessible environment than the so called FFXIV raid "scene" and the amount of energy it requires isn't worth what little you get for it imo.

Compare it to WoW where I log on and do my daily lonewolfing and everything else, including the highest difficulty raiding, I get through the guild just by having the ability/ambition level I have.