Update on life and the Conclave

I feel obligated to apologize for my sudden decrease in posting frequency. I had about 7 weeks starting around the time of the release of Cata where I took as much time off of work as I spent in the office. It really messed with my focus and I started letting things slip. In an effort to refocus myself, I made a conscious effort to really buckle down and get shit done. That meant that the hour or so I used most days to blog (more for those uber-long guide posts with lots of links) had to get shoved off to the side until I could catch back up.

I'm just about there. A few more weeks, I think. Until then I'm probably going to be at the 1-2 posts/week pace I've been holding recently, rather than the 3-4 posts/week pace I tried to keep up through the first year.

That aside, I do want to spend a quick moment to say that, so far, I've enjoyed raiding in Cata more than any other expansion. It's challenging, but engaging. While my guild is only 2/12 so far (closing in on #3), those two kills already filled me with a huge sense of accomplishment.

On Friday night we took on the Conclave of the Winds. It was a hand-picked 10-man team of some of our best raiders. We spent 20 attempts learning the fight, tweaking our strategy, and honing our timing. On the proclaimed "for-real real last attempt of the night" we got the kill...anti-climactic as it was. ("Did we do it? We won? We won!") Seriously. There was no flourish. No big flash or crash. They go out with a whimper and if you don't know what you're looking for (like we didn't), then it takes you a couple seconds to notice it. The only reason I knew for sure we'd won is that the EPGP boss kill window popped up.

I have to say, though, it might be my new favorite fight in all of WoW. It's complex, but not overly chaotic (like Omn(omnom)itron) feels). It's also the only fight I can immediately think of as a raid lead where I had to ask for constant feedback from my raiders. I couldn't just look around and get an instant handle on what was going on. I needed their input. I think I'm going to have to start asking for that kind of feedback more regularly, though on 25s I'm definitely going to have to make sure I'm getting it from specific people.