That’s entirely unnecessary. There’s been no post by him in here so far.
Bepples does ignore threads about melee Hunters… until posters mention him by name.
As for the OP… I honestly don’t know. Before Legion, I thought that Blizzard would never remove a spec. And then come Legion, they deleted a spec.
As far as I’m concerned, THAT shows that no spec is safe.
If you ask me, the best option is to bring back ranged SV as a 4th spec. I do hope that Blizzard’s open to the idea.
I’d rather survival hunter be converted to a tank spec.
I really enjoyed Surv in PVP in WoD. Probably my favourite version of Hunter I’ve played (started in MoP). Explosive Shot, Black Arrow, etc.
Those people are silly gooses. Geese? Geese.
Anyway, melee hunter should exist, but it should be Beastmaster spec as Rexxar is a Beastmaster and he’s melee, and Survival Hunter should return to what it used to be, elemental ranged dps.
They…removed ranged Survival to make Melee Survival. So they could totally waffle and reverse this, since there’s precedence for removing a spec.
Edit: And don’t forget how they gutted Demonology in preparation for Demon Hunter.
i haven’t forgotten, nor will i forgive.
While we’re at it let’s remove Stealth from Outlaw. Because after all it’s just the third of three stealthy dual-wielders with slightly different types of stabbing. It’s kind of redundant.
Apparently handicapping specs is a good way to make them unique in a class. Melee brain class design takes in a nutshell.
It depends on your definition of “many” because we do actually have some insight into how many people play it from things like warcraftlogs and wowranks. While it’s obviously not zero, it’s the very least played spec in the game and it has been in an extremely unpopular state since it was made melee, and this is constant regardless of tuning.
Thankfully you will never be in charge because this is a terrible idea. Please keep your bad ideas to yourself.
Just an FYI to all readers Beaupeep is infamous on dropping terrible takes on Hunters all the time and this is absolutely wrong. Survival had a separate identity of utilitarianism and exotic munitions while Marksmanship always focused on sharpshooting and sniping. Those are as different fantasies as Affliction and Destruction or, since melee brains evidently have a hard time telling ranged specs apart, Assassination and Subtlety or Arms and Fury.
Question to Beaupeep: If Survival had exactly the same gameplay as it did now, except it used a ranged weapon and Raptor Strike were a ranged shot instead, would it suddenly be an MM clone again?
Also, do you sincerely believe handicapping specs within a class is a good way to make them unique? Would you agree to taking Stealth away from a Rogue spec?
This might come as a shock, so make sure you’re sitting down before reading this: specs should share some aspects from their baseline class. Believing that specs need to be entirely separate and distinct entities is a bad habit and you should work on that. Your own spec shares a lot with Elemental; do you whine endlessly about that, too?
I’ll oblige: here’s me playing Survival back in WoD in a time when it was objectively the most popular spec in the game:
I’m in good company, too. Here’s Preach Gaming talking about how great Survival is in WoD. Here’s him in Shadowlands talking about how he wishes they kept it ranged.
Here’s the same sentiment from Limit Maximum and Izen Hart.
I know you’re probably used to Survival being the abandoned circus freak of class design, but that doesn’t mean you can project it’s pitiful current state into the past. Ranged SV was demonstrably a consistently popular spec.
As for pretending that none of us played ranged Survival, well that’s just plain delusional, but don’t feel too bad: melee brains aren’t expected to give anything more than delusional and incorrect takes on ranged classes.
Proof of ranged Surival’s population:
In comparison, melee SV is usually dead last.
P.S. I have to love how apparently a third ranged spec would be redundant on account of the other two ranged specs yet apparently having it be restricted to melee range instead would make it strong and valuable. Because I guess when we were all playing Survival back in WotLK to WoD we were all thinking “Gee, being able to do full DPS anywhere from 0-40 yard range really sucks; if only I were limited to 5 yards!”.
I’d rather all melee mains are banned from giving takes on the Hunter class but we can’t always get what we want.
I’d rather not hot-potato this unwanted concept between Hunter specs. No Hunter spec should be melee in its baseline form. It’s just a fundamentally bad idea. Hunters in WoW have been thoroughly rooted in and framed around ranged weapon combat and we start with a ranged weapon at level 1. It never make sense and never will to ask any one of the specs to throw away that ranged weapon at level 10. At most they should have a talent within BM that swaps out its ranged shots for melee strikes in exchange for a damage boost. That way when it inevitably appeals to only the tiniest of niches it doesn’t take an entire spec with it.
I mean you just defended them doing a similar thing to Survival so it can’t be that hard to forgive and forget.
But it would not be a SV post with out Bepples. They’re the glue that connects all groups of hunters.
Glad Stance was a gimmick. I have 0 qualms if they add a 4th Warrior (and/or Paladin!) spec in the future for sword and board DPS, but it needs to be its own thing and not just a rip off of Prot.
I mean, yeah. Old Survival.
But in all seriousness, Hunters are the only class that have been messed with to such an extent. I find it unlikely that they revert Survival at this point though. I feel if they were going to do that, it would’ve been after 1 expansion of giving the new version a try. But it’s been here for like 3 expansions now, yeah? It might get the typical xpack overhaul with several other classes, but I don’t think it’ll revert to ranged.
Oh my gosh you were right. He actually appeared, with an AoE counterattack too! He targeted everyone 
I am guilty for that. I had see what they would say. Just hope Toxi doesn’t show up.
Toxi is Bepples antithesis. One uses logical retorts to discuss why Range SV was better. While the other tries to prove Melee is better by trolling and memes.
You know I always said I would never play a melee hunter but recently I tried it and it is really fun! And I usually like ranged better. It is my funnest alt at the moment.
When Blizzard stopped trying…
I stopped trying.
Now I just play a BM hunter.
I did 2 timewalking dungeons today. It was so relaxing.
i’d like to see survival go back to what it once was but keep the newer stuff as well because the old survival was a mix of ranged and melee.
bring back black arrow!
In vanilla u started with a melee weapon and 2 melee abilities and no ranged abilities besides ranged auto attack. 
so you are wrong my friend melee was always apart of hunter
I hope so. I hate seeing “grappling hook hunters” leaping around.
Sorry that you dont like it 
i wish you had a better attitude then just remove it tho, there are people who enjoy it after all
I miss old survival.