Divine Anguish

Right now, we're caught in what Seth Godin calls The Dip - that space right after the initial rush when you've first started something and you're still enthusiastic about it... when suddenly things are difficult and bleak and it's easy to slack off.

I can't say I saw it coming.

Last Saturday was one of our best raiding days ever. We downed Malygos in 5 attempts (down from 9) despite 2 weeks of not raiding. Then we marched into Naxxramas and one-shot all the bosses, getting Make Quick Werk of Him, The Hundred Club and Arachnophobia along the way. Then we gave Ulduar a try - and downed Flame Leviathan on the second attempt.

So far, so good.

We wiped around 6 or 7 times on XT-002 Deconstructor after that, but that was ok. We logged out on Saturday night with high hopes for the next day.

On Sunday we wiped to the trash leading up to Ignis no less than ten times. Then we wiped to Ignis another fifteen.

When the trash respawned, we made our way to XT-002 again and proceeded to wipe another thirty or so times.

At the end of the day, we logged out extremely dissatisfied. We'd learned a lot, but the cost was high - I spent nearly 600 gold on repairs, and that doesn't count consumables. I think we'll have to resort to raid stacking to kill XT-002, at least until we increase everyone's DPS significantly. I can't say I'm too happy about that.

I've been angry and irritable a lot lately (lots of things on my mind, including a pending issue at work). This doesn't really help.

The damn Dip hit at the worst possible time.