Every Sunday (usually), Spiritual Guidance will offer practical insight for priests of the holy profession. Your host is Matt Low, the grand poobah of World of Matticus and a founder of No Stock UI, a new UI and addons blog for WoW. After a minor hiatus, Matticus examines the pain that many Discipline Priests experience: That they’re just not good enough and how to even the odds.

Apologies for the lengthy delay. I needed to grab some field data which took way longer than it should have. Coincidentally enough, Amanda Dean wrote about this very same issue a few days ago concerning healing meters and Discipline Priests. It still makes me sad every time I read about this. A raid leader or heal leader asks a Discipline Priest to go back to Holy because they feel their performance isn’t good enough. In most cases, I think it’s just them not truly understanding how Discipline works. It has always been about prevention not healing.

“You’re too low on the meters. Switch back to Holy.”

How many times have you Discipline Priests heard this? Being forced to switch back to Holy because the powers that be didn’t understand nor fully realize the true capabilities of Discipline Priests? It’s a good thing my bench boss didn’t tell me to switch to Holy. Then again, I am the bench boss.

My friends, there are tools that can help us. It’s impossible to change people’s minds on theory. But my CSI idol Grissom’s always said that evidence cannot be denied. Let’s stop using the same measuring stick that the majority has been using and look at something to help even the playing field.

Let’s start with WoW Web Stats. It was one of the premiere tools that came out some time ago and helped raids really analyze specific details of their fights.

But it’s not Disc Priest friendly, so we’re going to stop using it.