Old man, and spec changeFollow

Hello. Long time lurker, rare poster.
I currently have a level 58 Druid and am curious as to what spec might be viable as I launch into Outlands. I am aware of the various gear challenges for each specific spec, I just cant seem to come to a conclusion as to what would be the most beneficial to myself and whatever groups I might stumble across. To clarify, I am currently Feral, which I enjoy; however, it is my understanding that the Resto tree becomes far more desirable as the levels flow by. Thus, I ask for opinions, be they informative or outrageous. Thank you for your time.

Any spec is potentialy viable in Outlands just some might be more realistic at level 58 then others. Feral was my choice for Outland because in it you can solo effectively and hold any role in an instance. As a feral you can fill a spot for tank, dps, or healer (This is of course assuming that you have decent gear for all three jobs) which just makes finding a group much easier and less frustrating. Balance is another choice for solo play at that level and is probably as a good of a choice as feral; however, I have found that some groups are unwilling to accept balance druids for instance runs. Although this might just be a problem on my server. Balance druids can either dps or heal in instance groups. As for resto, I'd probably wait untill you are 70 to switch, if you decide to switch at all. Both feral and balance builds are effective healers up to the herioc dungeon level so at this point there's really no need to switch specs. Plus soloing as resto is painfully slow.

The net-net of my opinion/advice is this: If you have time to run a lot of instances and will want to heal them on a regular basis, go resto. Otherwise stay feral.

Here's the long-winded wall 'o text if you're interested.

I leveled feral through 70, and love it so have never really considered going resto. (With my main anyway...leveling a balance drood on another server for the different experience, and will go resto with her eventually.)

The cool thing about being feral is you can heal very well up to end-game with a healing set, in addition to having awesome DPS and being an excellent tank. I've assembled a set with like +850 healing just by grabbing relevant quest rewards when there was no feral option or a negligible upgrade, the occasional drop (including my Essence Focuser, w00t), and checking the AH for bargains. Meanwhile I have 2100 attack power in cat and 21,000 armor in bear. And I'm a casual player, with no PvP rewards and only a few pieces of instance loot. Please, hold your applause.

Note that as feral you can main heal instances, and I've done it successfully a few times, but at least for me the lack of talent-based "Uh-Oh!" abilities like Swiftmend and Nature's Swiftness makes it difficult and frustrating. I personally love healing the 5-man quests to take down non-dungeon bosses--they're hard enough to satisfy my occasional healing bug and make a good name for druid healing, but much faster and easier than trying to heal a full party for 2-3 hours through countless 4-mob pulls and multiple bosses. Gak. Then again, I've never played a healer so it might just be that I suck at it.

Feral is the better soloing spec, I'd say, with the versatility to down mobs lickety-split as cat, pop into bear to weather rough storms, self-heal as necessary, and get through it all with minimal OOM downtime. Restos are supposedly close to unkillable, but it takes 'em a lot longer to kill stuff on their own. Feral makes LFG as easy as you can imagine...once a group is coming together you can say things like "LF Healer -OR- Tank for _________." I love that. : )