{"id":544,"date":"2010-01-23T18:51:09","date_gmt":"2010-01-23T23:51:09","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/kurn.apotheosis-now.com\/?p=544"},"modified":"2010-01-23T18:51:09","modified_gmt":"2010-01-23T23:51:09","slug":"left-scratching-my-head","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/kurn.info\/blog\/left-scratching-my-head\/","title":{"rendered":"Left scratching my head…"},"content":{"rendered":"

So, as some of you may be aware, I applied to WoW.com to be their new holy paladin columnist. Today, in their paladin column, The Light and How to Swing It<\/em>, they announced that Chase Christian had been selected to be the new holy paladin columnist.<\/p>\n

This gentleman appears to also be the rogue behind their Encrypted Texts<\/em> column. It appears, after a little research, that Mr. Christian has levelled a holy paladin because his guild needed one.<\/p>\n

Honestly, I don’t think someone who has spent the last X number of years raiding as a rogue is going to be able to do a good job in terms of helping the paladin community with the holy side of things. I have no idea how long he’s had a paladin, but I know that I don’t know all the subtleties of all of my alts. I don’t even know all the subtleties of a hunter. But I’m fairly confident that I know my stuff when it comes to a holy paladin. Much like Mr. Christian probably knows the insides and outs of being a rogue.<\/p>\n

Out of curiousity, I listened to a few minutes of the WoW Insider show today after it had been broadcast, as Mr. Christian was a guest. They mentioned that he’ll be writing the new holy paladin column and asked what he thought he would bring to the column.<\/p>\n

His reply was something along the lines of “well I don’t know how many times I can say stack intellect in every socket…”<\/p>\n

Uh? Sure, most paladins do stack int in every socket. I’m no exception. But there are other raiding holy paladins who don’t stack int — they stack spellpower. They are the Flash of Light spammers who use Seal of Light and its associated Glyph and stack spellpower and basically use that. So you have a Holy Light bombing paladin, stacking int and being responsible for the big incoming heals, and you have the Flash of Light spammer who is responsible for keeping the 1-second FoL heals coming constantly.<\/p>\n

Further, what about new-to-80 holy paladins? You can’t just stack intellect the instant you hit 80, or even while levelling. You need to hit about 2000 spellpower first and THEN work on your intellect, or else your heals are just not going to be strong enough to keep your targets up. What does it matter if you have 25,000 mana if your Holy Light doesn’t hit for enough to keep your tank up?<\/p>\n

Yes, I realize that Mr. Christian’s comment on the WoW Insider show was likely a joke, but I am not at all convinced that he’s the right person for the job. Maybe I’m not either, but I’ve raided as a holy paladin for all of Burning Crusade and all of Wrath and chunks of pre-BC. I think I know how my class works.<\/p>\n

Having said that, what on earth was the point of WoW.com calling for applications for the holy paladin column if they were going to consider an internal candidate? I’m not a business genius, but convention has it, in many businesses, that a job goes around internally first, then external applicants get their shot.<\/p>\n

I have no idea how many people applied to the holy paladin column, but let’s imagine (and I think I’m probably low-balling it) that 150 people applied.<\/p>\n

That’s 150 people who took the time to sit down and come up with:<\/p>\n

– 10 sample topics<\/p>\n

– 1 sample article of about 500 words<\/p>\n

– 1 pretend letter to Blizzard about their class\/spec of about 1000 words<\/p>\n

That doesn’t include your background and why you think you’d do a good job.<\/p>\n

I spent approximately 4-5 hours on my application, re-reading, re-writing, editing and trying to cut my sample article down from 920 words to 500. (I got it down to 606 and honestly couldn’t snip another word.)<\/p>\n

Assume not everyone of those estimated 150 people spent 4-5 hours on their application. Imagine 150 people spent an average of 2 hours on their applications. I don’t think that’s too far-fetched, because you needed approximately 1500 words in terms of sample writing in order to apply.<\/p>\n

That’s probably 300-some hours of work. That’s 12 days and 12 hours of work by what I think is an obscenely low number of potential applicants.<\/p>\n

So you’re telling me that WoW.com basically wasted two weeks’ of people’s collective time and then decided to get the rogue writer<\/em> to do the holy paladin column?<\/p>\n

Nice.<\/p>\n

I’ll read a couple of Mr. Christian’s paladin columns, but if I am not absolutely blown away by his work, I’m going to start going elsewhere for my World of Warcraft news.<\/p>\n

In the meantime, look for some holy paladin-specific material to crop up right here.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

So, as some of you may be aware, I applied to WoW.com to be their new holy paladin columnist. Today, in their paladin column, The Light and How to Swing It, they announced that Chase Christian had been selected to be the new holy paladin columnist. This gentleman appears to also be the rogue behind […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[20,3],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-544","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-paladins","category-ramblings"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/kurn.info\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/544","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/kurn.info\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/kurn.info\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/kurn.info\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/kurn.info\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=544"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/kurn.info\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/544\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/kurn.info\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=544"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/kurn.info\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=544"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/kurn.info\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=544"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}