Yes you should almost always wait for phase 2 since if you get an Alpha slayer it will help a lot for this event and also for the next.
Alright, cheers, going to hold on to those 2 tickets then. Still pretty new, only my second EG. Barely managed to get the lillith card reward on last one. :P
There's always the possibility of letting someone else take care of your account while you're on vacation. Of course, you need to really trust them to do this.