Originally Posted by
Squirl
You can have a full raid of ranged and be fine. You can't have a full raid of melee or you're going to have a bad time. 1-2 skilled melee is almost always viable though. You can get recruited as a melee if the group doesn't already have too many, but it will almost certainly be easier to get a spot as a ranged.
Mages are definitely in a great spot as far as DPS, but I agree that actually playing one is horrendous (was my second 90... I quickly leveled a Hunter for alt raids instead). Good Mages are in demand and seem to be very hard to come by. If you still want to be a caster, Warlocks and Shadow Priests are crushing it right now. Shadow Priests have basically nothing to do while moving though. Hunters aren't top-tier in DPS or raid utility, but they're probably the easiest ranged to play.
For melee, Arms Warriors are broken or something. Some of them put up crazy numbers to the point that something might get hotfixed. They also have a lot of raid utility. If you want to level your Rogue, we've been in an awesome spot this whole xpac. We have Smoke Bomb (though not super useful in SoO) for raid utility, a slew of personal defensives (including Feint; probably the most OP ability in the game for PvE), adequate mobility, and awesome DPS.
Ranged vs. Melee DPS usually isn't too imbalanced. Melee generally deals with fewer mechanics but sometimes has to sit around doing nothing. Melee also can't hit some things that need to die, which can occasionally hamstring the raid.
Either way, pick up whatever you enjoy the most and find a guild that needs it. Good luck!