Community Spotlight: Swaycos
Meet: Swaycos
Heyo! Swaycos here aka Squishy Fu-…n Guy, and I am a raider and jokester for Team Prism. Growing up, my mom used to say, “You either laugh or you cry,” so I became very funny. Running high level dungeons or progging bosses can be stressful, so I like to keep it light because it helps remind people we’re here to have fun! Sometimes my jokes are self-deprecating (I call them self-defecating), and sometimes they’re about leadership’s (in)ability to spell (you know who you are 😛 ).
Seriously, though, if I had to describe myself, I’d say I’m passionate and driven (cliche, I know).
I love the competition, but more importantly, it has been part of the bond between my brother and I and has led to many wonderful friendships.
Like my brother, Vague, I’ve played games my whole life. My first game was Super Mario Bros. for NES. Since then, I have always enjoyed gaming, and it has served as an escape for me. Vague touched lightly on our past growing up. It was very difficult at times, and as he mentioned, we were homeless at one point. Gaming has been a passion of mine. I love the competition, but more importantly, it has been part of the bond between my brother and I and has led to many wonderful friendships. We have a tight group of friends that has been together 16 years! We spend almost every Friday night together gaming and talking about the happenings in our lives. We’re there for each other when things are tough, offering an ear or counsel. We were even groomsmen at one of our friend’s weddings! I see parallels between the way our friends’ group and VALOR operate, and it’s a large part of the reason I feel drawn here.
Competing has always been a passion of mine. I love finding something I’m drawn to, learning how to do it, then driving myself (sometimes insane) to be great at it. I grew up playing basketball, baseball, and football. Once events in my childhood nixed those dreams, I moved to competitive gaming. While Vague found Rainbow Six, I found Rocket League. I achieved Grand Champ rank multiple times. I competed in multiple leagues over the years, and I competed for my community college in the NJCAAe (NCAA’s community college eSports league). Our school made Top 32 in the nation the first season and still made playoffs the following season before roster boss issues kept us from competing (community college attendees are typically there for a few courses before transferring to a larger school). As for more MMOs, I have experience in Star Trek: Online and Final Fantasy XIV. In Star Trek, I was both a leader and community event organizer in a 500-player guild. In FFXIV, I was a casual content clearer beginning to focus on Savage content with a guild. Sadly, between Square Enix making the game too easy and guild drama, I quit playing. I’m fairly new to WoW. I’ve been playing since September 2024. I’ve watched competitive gaming for years, and my favorite team is Team Liquid. So when TL picked up a WoW team, Vague and I checked it out. Watching the RWF was awesome, and it became a regular event for us to bond over. The whole RWF experience made WoW a top choice when we were choosing a new game to play together. Thanks to Alkamyst, who was the only other person we knew who played WoW, we joined VALOR.
My first season was S1 of TWW. I started on Pres Evoker but quickly realized I needed to learn how to play WoW in general before I could be good at it (or go to Presvoker college for a semester). I made a character for each class and just started playing them to see how they felt. While I originally leaned towards Warlock, I felt myself drawn to playing a healer as I have always been a healer. After trying all the healers, I was between Priest and Mistweaver. I chose Mistweaver. Mistweaver was appealing because it’s a melee healer. This contrasted with my FFXIV experience where all healers are casters. I had so much fun running around in melee AS A HEALER dodging frontals and boss mechanics. I stuck with Mistweaver until post-S1 and achieved both 4/8M in Nerub-ar Palace and a 2500 M+ rating, which was done mostly through pugging (I’m a glutton for punishment, I know). Heading into S2, my work schedule was becoming a problem. Raid teams have enough roster boss issues, so a healer who can only be there half the time isn’t a great choice. Two weeks before S2, I decided to switch to DPS. Again I went through multiple classes figuring out what I wanted to play, and again, I was choosing based on what I liked, not what was meta or going to be meta moving into the next season. I revisited Destruction Warlock and tried out Marksman Hunter and Fire Mage. While those were fun to play, I still found myself drawn to Devastation Evoker (wasn’t fun for keys cuz despite top damaging, people wanted an Aug lmao). I played Devoker when I was a noob clearing the Dragonflight content. The idea of being a fire-breathing dragon who flew around and died easily seemed fun. Playing Devoker keeps both me AND my healers on their toes!
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The decision to become a nurse wasn’t made on a whim. It took encouragement. My experience in the ICU with my grandmother left a lasting impression on me.
As for my AFK time, I work as an ER nurse. Revisiting my passions, helping others is at the top of the list. I love doing community service work, and I was fortunate enough to take care of my grandmother for the last year of her life. In the beginning, I had to convince her to come live with us. She was fiercely independent, and she still lived alone in her hometown. When my family went to pick her up, we found she was in a rehab center for a fall she had. We helped her recover, packed her things, and moved her in with us where she spent the next 11 months. I was responsible for ensuring she got her coffee, food, medicines, and entertainment, and I would keep a log (charting as I would later find out xD) of all the things done each day with date and times. My mom (grandma was her mother) took care of bathing her. My dog even got used to her presence. After 11 months, grandma woke up after a nap with severe weakness in one half of her body. It turned out she had a stroke. I remember making the drive to the hospital and her rehab for stroke recovery. I watched the nurses, the speech therapists, and the physical therapists help her recover some of what she lost. After 2 weeks in recovery, while I was visiting her (I visited every day), she had an episode where she went unresponsive. We found out that the lining of her heart split and was leaking blood into the sac that surrounds it effectively suffocating it slowly. Grandma was rushed to the ICU. The surgeon who saw her said she had less than a 5% chance of surviving a life-saving surgery, and it would likely cause her heart enough stress that it might stop during surgery and require some brutal resuscitation efforts. At this point, my grandmother, who was still sharp as a tac, decided to pass on the surgery and spend the rest of her time on Earth with her family at home. I still vividly remember her hospital bed set up in our front living room looking out across a field with a large tree in the front yard. Though she was hard of sight, as she looked and saw the tree, the fields, and the clear sky, she said, “It’s a beautiful place to die.” She stayed in our care for 2 days before passing. I was charged with keeping her comfortable and waiting for her to draw her final breath, which I was present and awake for. This was easily one of the most impactful moments in my life. It was at this point I decided to become a nurse. This was the last, and easily the greatest, gift my grandmother gave me.
The decision to become a nurse wasn’t made on a whim. It took encouragement. My experience in the ICU with my grandmother left a lasting impression on me. Not only did I see the nurses working to keep her stable and comfortable, but the hospital clergy also came to check on her. The clergy woman spoke with me about life, and she asked me what I liked to do. I told her I liked helping people and playing music. She said that music is great fun, but for most, it does not offer a stable income to provide for oneself and family. She encouraged me to look at nursing as I could not only serve people, but I would always have a job waiting for me somewhere, too. I started by working as a nurse’s aide in both ER and Med-surge (think regular part of the hospital). After years of working and saving, I entered college to get my degree in nursing. I graduated last year with a 4.0 GPA, the only one in my class. I have been working in an ER ever since. While experiencing the death of my grandmother was difficult, it served to completely transform my life. As luck would have it, my school had an eSports club; however, it was on its last legs. Vague and I (he attended the same college for a bit) were instrumental in reviving the dying club. I was the captain of the Rocket League team, and I made videos of our club for the school YouTube channel. Despite being 10yrs older than my teammates and having led teams through traditional sports, eSports, and school, I learned even more about being a leader.
Believe it or not, I do have activities outside of gaming. I’ve played drums since 2011 (I play mostly metal but also punk and jazz) and guitar off-and-on since 2020. I also play DnD (I play Bard, but not THAT kind of bard, more like a Mr. Rogers bard), and I like reading. My recent favorites include the second series of Percy Jackson as well as Cyberpunk: No Coincidence. I’m looking at diving back into Harry Potter as well since I never made it past The Goblet of Fire growing up (I don’t keep up much on books or movies). When I’m not doing any of that, I enjoy community service work through a local church (work schedule permitting). We’ve done things like clean up a women’s shelter, built a wheelchair ramp for someone who had become newly wheelchair-bound, and spent time feeding and bonding with people at a center for those with developmental disabilities.
Come hang out with me sometime! Between jokes and ER stories, damage dealing ability and randomly dying, I have a lot of entertainment to offer. I’m a virtual roulette wheel of fun!
Swaycos is the chaotic ball of energy every raid needs. Equal parts menace and meme machine. He’s constantly roasting me (rude!), but somehow makes raid nights ten times more fun in the process. Whether we’re deep in evoker theorycrafting or he’s whispering me ‘whisper’ mid-fight for absolutely no reason, it’s never a dull moment. Yet, he still manages to get PI every time with his constant dedication to learning his class and performing the best he can. I genuinely love having him on the team. He brings laughter, energy, and a whole lot of heart to Prism.
– kasper, VALOR Prism Co-Raid Lead
