Originally Posted by
Socronoss
Well, it's kind of the same now: You can participate, but won't be top DPS. Depending on your class/spec, you will still be firm in the middle. After 1-2 weeks of doing the regular farm routine, including quite a few m+10s and higher, you will be easily at trait 40 or so. Gear still comes from guild carrying you for 1-2 weeks. Legendaries are still RNG, but the BIS and non-BIS have already come closer together and will even more so later this week when 7.2 hits.
Even before 7.2, at 40 traits, with medium leggies and somewhat caught-up gear, you would probably do a base 10-15% worse than one with full arti and BIS leggies. Given that every class/spec has quite some RNG in their performance nowadays, this can be worse or only 8% if you're lucky and someone else isnt.
Overall: You're still in the same situation as for those 12+ years you quoted, you just have to put more personal effort in, instead of "just" having your guild carry you. Which seems fair enough for me.