Disc priests, give it a rest.

Q u o t e:
We're doing our best to get everything ready for 3.1 without delaying it unnecessarily. Discipline is in much the same position as death knights are - the entire tree came into existence as a PvE spec in Wrath of the Lich King, and it is going to go through more changes, comparatively, than older specs. At the moment, we are concentrating on mechanical bug fixes to Discipline, since the tree is impossible to balance if the mechanics are not functioning properly.

We have heard your concerns, and we understand them. We've seen the numbers, and we agree that Discipline might not be at the ideal spot in terms of balance. However, Holy Paladins are also at a non-ideal spot. This relationship between Discipline Priests and Holy Pallies will be looked at moving forward, hopefully to the satisfaction of both classes.

Sure, that doesn't sound too far off, especially the first paragraph. We think you are a lot closer to Holy paladins than you seem to think, and I even made sure to talk that over with the class designers to made sure they all agreed. You aren't going to "win the healing meters" vs. a Holy paladin, because that's not how your class does its job. But I suspect I don't need to say that to this crowd. :)

Will raids want Disc priests? We are honestly not too worried about that. We'd estimate about half of the healing priests we've watched in Ulduar are Disc, at least for the guilds that are making boss kills. Consider, that when you have a tank with 45,000 health and a boss is hitting for 25,000 health (which is not the kind of thing we did in Naxx, but is in Ulduar), none of the healing you can do will let that tank survive two hits in a row. But Power Word: Shield will.

Q u o t e:
It would help if Blizzard would implement the UI changes needed to let us get accurate numbers on how much damage we've mitigated. Right now we can only estimate, which is part of the problem with the debate on whether or not we're effective enough at our role.

I suspect Disc priests know they are effective and good raid leaders understand it. I can understand how a pug or a more casual guild where the raid leader might not be super well-versed in class mechanics might (shudder) use the healing meter as the basis for deciding who gets slots.

But yes, being able to accurately credit casters with their absorbs would help. That is something we are looking into. Not over-interpreting healing meters would also help. :)

Q u o t e:
Sounds like a discipline priest is required in fights like that. Tell me about the fights that a holy priest will be required for?

There are no fights in Ulduar that require any particular class or spec.