TLDR 2 questions:
1. Will I be able to get invited to raids as feral DPS, assuming proper gearing and excellent knowledge of the spec? I'm not looking for "cutting edge progression", but a guild a few steps above casual that will clear all the content in a reasonable time frame
2. If not, can I heal raids with a healing set + feral talents? (100g respeccing per week is a big NOPE for me). Perhaps feral offtank/dps on some bosses and healing on others?
Long version:
Hi all, I'm new to vanilla wow, and although I've done a lot of research on the topic, I'm still going to go ahead and make a forum post about it anyway. Maining a class in vanilla is a big investment, and I don't want to spend 7 days /played just to find I don't enjoy the endgame at 60
Firstly. I am 98% committed to the druid at this point, it's been my main for the longest time on retail, and I feel strong loyalty to the class. That being said, I'm not too bothered about being "forced" resto for raiding, I enjoy the spec, just not as much as feral. The biggest issue is the lack of dual spec, where my main interest is high-end pvp feral - but I want to raid in order to obtain the best gear for said feral spec.
So this is my question. I've heard feral is rather lackluster when it comes to pve, although how much does that really matter if you have 40 raid slots if i'm maybe doing 50 less dps than the other dps? (I bring the crit buff too). I'm a very skilled player (multi R1-gladiator, high end pve) so I'm sure that after some practice I will be able to get the most of of my class - but will that be enough?
I'm really scared that even with full pre-raid BiS I'll get responses like "feral lol". If that's the case, would it be possible to simply heal raids with a healing set in feral spec (not interested in farming 100g a week just for respeccing purposes)
If all else fails, I suppose I'm just going to be resto for a year or so before I can get enough offspec rolls to slowly build a feral set. I don't want to be just "another" rogue/warrior. My personality compels me to be a special snowflake and play the "DansGame" spec that others don't. It's really hard to know with 0 actual personal experience of vanilla, everywhere I look tells me everything from "feral is absolute garbage" to "feral can work pretty well if you go the extra mile to be viable"
Any insight is useful
