I’m looking to 9.0 now. I really don’t want to grind the Essences on alts and it’s keeping me from gearing my 3 real alts. I’ve stuck with my Hunter all expansion this time.
While it’s been fun, I’m not good at SV hunter. I want to play melee again, but I don’t think SV is in my wheelhouse moving forward. BM just isn’t as good as I want it to be anymore or I’d stick with BM.
I’ve played FDK, Ret, and Feral over the past 3-4 expansions when I wanted to play a melee spec so those are what I’m familiar with.
What spec of those has tended toward “good” over the past few expansions PVP wise. I don’t particularly play 3s. I love playing in 2s and solo content. I also don’t want to be garbage in PVE when I’m inevitably forced to do M+ for gear.
Thoughts would be SUPER appreciated.
DK in general has been strong, maybe not Frost though, but it still has Unholy that is decent if Frost isn’t. Ret and Feral are usually meh.
Gosh i really miss playing my alts.
But anyway depends on what your looking for if you wanna play more setup type comps id say ret or feral (they also have a few cleave comps as well, ebola, dk/ret, arms/ret).
Dks are generally relegated to cleave/rot comps, things like tsg, dk/lock/x, but have a fair amount of depth and skillcap for a melee class.
For 2s and solo content I’d vote ret or feral personally.
My thoughts would be for you to watch guides on sv. Get better at it. You’re pretty geared. They are GREAT in 2s. Basically the content you’re looking to do. With just a little practice and such, you would probably feel MUCH better on sv then you ever could on any of those other specs.
Even if you mastered ret, feral or fdk. A competent SV would chew them alive in 2s.
But if you must choose something off that list. (terrible list of specs) I’d vote Ret for you as the easiest alternative.
If you ever get above 1800 with ret you mine as well knife yourself now though. If you’re pugging around at low ratings. Super fun 
Ret is the same thing every expansion.
New gimmick design that deals way too much damage. Get nerfed to oblivion within the first months of the expansion with no compensation on broken mechanics and leave ret at the same place all expansion scared to make it op again. Repeat every expansion.
Meanwhile mages and rogues have been op for the whole game time and they let them be op. Make new classes, extremely op.
I’m not kidding, next expansion if there is a new class im maining it 100%. I know i’ll be op for few expansions
I want to play ret because I love the sounds and spell animations. I like the playstyle. It’s fun. But it just isn’t good enough. Shame.
I love the idea of ret, but the cataclysm version was perfect, since then it’s been disappointment after disappointment.