As much as it sucks that the game keeps pushing content that heavily favors the static system (and I still think tying Seph EX into progression was a mistake in their part), there is a lot to be said for doing actually challenging things with a reliable group of people you don't want to slap (or... Do want to slap and enjoy doing so between pulls, if that's what floats your boat.) Raiding only has to be as serious, time-consuming, and pressure filled as you want it to be, and while it took us way too long to actually kill Sephirot I actually had fun on the days we just wiped for hours. The end goal of those days was to get the weapons, but the actual process and fight was fun for its own sake. This works less well with random people in PF.