Huh…
So you saying this didn’t actually happen then?
On topic btw, while I don’t play mage myself, I doubt that there are many current mages who would want to remove either frost, fire or arcane in favor of a melee spec.
Would some? Probably. But(proportionally) not many.
Maybe. But the current mages will not necessarily be here forever nor will they all be against it for sure. Things have to evolve to not only retain the interest of current players but also attract newer players. The Red Mage in FFXIV is super popular because it is very unique in that it is a mage that combines melee and the arcane which is very interesting. Not saying it will necessarily work in WoW but it is a good idea to study.
Regarding ppl saying no one wanted SV melee hunters. Even when i was playing my hunter in Vanilla and a lot of players experimented with using melee weapons on their hunters there were clamors for a melee spec. So ppl saying that blizz did it out of the air even though no one wanted it is again false. 
I chose hunter cause im for range non magical non cast time physical type class. Also i love pets so that was plus. From bc to mop i had 3 specs in game to play as. Then wod they added casting to mm and took away pet with lone wolf. I dont mind option for pet or not but when dps difference is so high i have to remove a class fantasy aka pet to be competitive it ruins spec for me so i lost mm. I been main rsv since day i started wow till legion pre patch when it went melee. I did notplay hunter to me melee i had 12 other specs to choose from so i lost my most fav spec in game. So what am i left with? Bm, its ok but just shooting snakes all day while turning orange doesnt fill in fun i had on survival. So yes there is some out there that love melee aspect. Then there’s others who lost their fav class cause of all drastic changes over years. When im out doing things, i see lots of hunters, seems like 4 classes i see most is pally dk hunter lock, and 99% of those hunters is bm, maybe a mm here and there. I look closely cause i play archer class in all mmos, a dead eye / ranger in gw2, warden bow pet in eso, machinist ff14 etc. I love seeing what people do with hunters i have never seen a melee survival out in field not once. Not talking it down or nothing but im not lying either.
Never said so.
I would argue that this is a common misconception, in terms of class development at least. Certain things might need to change ofc, especially in terms of fixing mechanical issues/problems that are tied to how specs play.
But what you’re thinking of there, is basically “change for the sake of changing things”.
It is when you enter this territory that you’re walking a very thin line. Especially, if you go about making drastic changes to entire specs and to their very foundations.
It is true that the old SV spec from for example Vanilla or BC, had some influence if melee. Though that was not intended to make you focus on melee over ranged combat.
…and I have no doubt some even tried to find a way to forego the ranged gameplay in favor of mostly engaging in melee combat.
But if you actually look at how the class as a base was designed back then, along with all the different talent options we had throughout all three specs, nothing within those talents, would’ve been enough for a proper melee “spec”.
I typed “spec” the way I did as we did not have such defined playstyles back then as we do today.
If you did not use ranged abilities back then, you essentially had Raptor Strike and Auto Attacks. And Wing Clip as well, though it didn’t really deal any damage worth noting.
Both Mongoose Bite as well as Counterattack required you to dodge/parry attacks, or you wouldn’t be able to use those abilities at all. Which was sometimes fine while you were engaged in PvP or solo gameplay(like in the open world). As the likelihood that you would be struck was higher than normal.
But for group-based content such as dungeons or raids, it wasn’t really a viable way to play.
In perspective, they actually did.
At the time of WoD/Legion, the amount of posts or comments where players were asking for a melee option for the class, weren’t exactly common.
And the amount of posts where players were asking/demanding for the Survival spec to be turned into a melee spec, were non-existent.
True, Blizzard did remove melee aspects from Hunters over time. They did this because they intended for the class to continue it’s focus on ranged gameplay. And because of the removal of the min attack-range on ranged weapons along with us no longer having a deadzone. It just wasn’t worth keeping melee weapons anymore. Apart from having them as statsticks.
They didn’t just remove melee from the old SV spec in the past. They removed it from the entire class.
This, while some may not agree with it, was more along the lines of a natural progression in terms of class development. Sure, thematically, it might fit to have both melee weapons along with ranged weapons. But it was not a practical/useful design for the class anymore.
The change we got with Legion where they removed RSV(a ranged spec option), was not a natural type of progression for the class. It would’ve been if we in the past had already started to develop a spec focusing on melee combat. Then it would’ve been natural in terms of Hunter class development.
Despite this, they(devs) removed RSV. They simply did not care that the vast majority of the players who played as hunters at the time, did so because they wanted that ranged gameplay for dealing damage. And that many of those, preferred RSV over MM or BM.
Not all ofc, but most. If that ranged gameplay wasn’t desired, very few would’ve actually stuck with the class…
Edit:
Just a final note. We’re now several years further along from those changes between WoD - Legion. And I would say that, what’s done is done.
At this stage, removing for example current Survival, wouldn’t fix everything. It would make RSV players happy ofc, though as right now, there would be players who would lose their preferred spec/playstyle.
Which is also why the 4th spec option for the class is without a doubt, the best option of all. Giving us that additional spec, WOULD fix these problems we’re having. And it would make these arguments/discussions go away. Permanently.
Hunters already have 2 ranged specs, you’ll be fine.
I’m glad. I mostly like where Survival is at now. We don’t need a 3rd ranged spec, and we don’t need one that’s a carbon copy, like few of you want, of survival from WoD.
A melee survivalist with pets is a pretty cool theme, and it has a fun playstyle. Being the only melee class with a pet tank is pretty awesome. If anything, change the lame wrist bow into poison-tipped hatchets, and we are good to go.
And you already have 12 other melee specs(not incl MSV).
Anyway, when there’s a way to get ranged SV back without hurting existing specs, that argument of yours doesn’t really hold up. Especially considering neither of those 2 existing specs, plays like the old RSV did. Not even close.
Who’s we?
Who do you speak for?
I can only speak for myself ofc, but I deff need that 3rd ranged weapon spec in the form of ranged SV.
Funny that “a carbon copy of Survival from WoD” is about the least requested revert-to-this type of post that I’ve seen for ranged SV. At least on here…
But anyway, I agree. Mostly because there isn’t a single iteration of the old SV spec which we’ve had that you can “copy-paste” into the modern game and have it work well with what’s already here.
No matter what would be brought into the game, we would need to add some things to make it fit.
This would be one way to do it(elements taken from all past iterations of the old RSV spec):
They look at data when they decide what specs need particular changes. They don’t do a small poll on forums to make sweeping changes for hundreds of thousands of players. It’s not about things being right or wrong, like you suggest. If it were, they are mathematically correct seeing they have the data to see who is playing what spec for what content–indisputably proving if the spec is successful or not.
That being said, I do sympathize with you and others. It would suck to have a spec you really enjoy taken from the game. It is frustrating to feel like you aren’t being heard. Or that, this being an MMO, other players are getting in the way of what single-player aspects you enjoy, such as your connection to your spec. I’m a guy who nit-picks a lot in WoW; I have to have a good-looking class, with a nice-feeling rotation, and a good fantasy/theme. And personally, I love the new survival.
I like having a melee option inside a predominantly ranged class. To tell you the truth, it makes me nervous when I see posts from the vocal minority about how they want the ranged version back because there was nothing too special about it to me. We have ranged dot classes. We don’t have a mobile melee class with a plethora of ranged options and a full-fledged pet that can tank; that’s awesome to me!
It would be nice to have a 4th spec to accommodate you and others. Most likely, though, they won’t any time soon. They are behind on development and are pushing things that retain players and get new ones more than ever. And creating and balancing a new spec into future patches and expansions is more resources than this New Blizzard is probably willing to spend.
If you look at RSV back then, I would argue that they did not.
Edit. Correction, here’s the actual short version:
That data and those numbers you mentioned, in the current game considering the history, those numbers don’t hold up.
Long version:
They went into the development process of Legion and classes. They started looking at the hunter class and, with the new design philosophy in mind where they had to double down on spec fantasy, they had to look at each spec and think of what they could do with it to make it more distinct from the others.
BM was quite obvious ofc, more focus on pets. Not just your main pet.
MM was the same. More focus on the sniper/sharpshooter fantasy. As well as increased focus on being a “Lone Wolf”. Not being dependent on using a pet. Also not having any way to further rely on pets, either through talents or otherwise.
When they came to RSV, it was probably more that they perhaps did not have such a clear vision for how to develop it. And someone early on in the process, came up with the idea that “hey, let’s give the Hunter class a melee spec”.
And since they are extremely hesitant towards adding in 4th spec options no matter the circumstances, they felt that one spec out of three had to be taken out before. Since MM is literally about being a marksman and a sharpshooter, that made little sense.
BM technically could’ve been an alternative though they felt that it had the strongest core fantasy of embracing what the class was about the most. So they didn’t want to remove it. (Pretty ironic considering current MSV in BfA)
So, what they had left was Survival…
From that moment on, they did not bother with looking into the spec as it was, what it was all about. How it’s current theme/fantasy could be developed as well.
Simply put, they did no longer care about what could be done with it.
Despite the fact that it, like the other 2 specs, could very well have been developed into a completely unique spec with a playstyle heavily focused on enhancing ammunition/arrows as well as traps. Which was the actual theme of the spec already, just that it could be even more so.
Especially the mechanical concept of the spec being the one that focused on DoTs and dealing with multiple targets at once. As this actually made sense.
In this case, yes it is.
Because the devs did not care about what the majority of the players playing this class wanted at the time.
If the majority of the hunters out there wanted melee gameplay over ranged, the class would’ve been extremely unpopular prior to Legion, as it was purely about ranged combat. Which did not happen…
It is true that players originally playing other classes that were melee, or even some new players have come to enjoy the MSV spec. And some prior ranged hunters as well ofc.
But the popularity of current SV, still isn’t anywhere close to how popular RSV was when we had it. So basically, any numbers argument for MSV, does not hold up.
Not entirely sure what you mean by “vocal minority” here.
If you look at class forums and at how they have been developing for the last 4 years(since we lost ranged SV). For most of these years, one of the most/if not the most popular class specific feedback topics of all, is the topic about seeing the return of ranged SV.
By this I mean topics that are about feedback related to specific classes.
Not feedback that is about general systems design or general design changes towards all classes. Ofc you have feedback that is more commonly brought up then.
And speaking of vocal minority…
At the time when they removed ranged SV in favor of MSV, there really wasn’t any feedback from players wanting to see a melee only spec for the class. Or I should say, there probably was some, though it was far from a common topic on various forums etc.
And specifically, there wasn’t any feedback/demands from players that they should turn the Survival spec into a melee spec. That topic, did not exist.
This subjective viewpoint is ofc something you’re free to have. Ofc one spec cannot be perfect for everyone. If you did not like RSV, that’s up to you really.
But my point here is, MANY players did. No one asked for it to be removed.
We currently have no ranged weapon DoT spec in the entire game…
We only have 1 spec in the game that focuses on your ranged weapon much at all…
(No, not counting BM here as it doesn’t actually focus on ranged combat as much as it focuses on pets and beasts in various ways). It’s essentially half a ranged spec.
Pretty ironic considering what they have had to do with current Survival for the past 2 expansions. And considering that it’s nowhere near as popular as ranged SV was in general.
Dev-time well spent indeed…
Well said. When they finally took the decision to make a melee hunter I was also skeptical at first but grew to love and appreciate it. Especially since i tend to burn up playing one kind of class for too long. With this melee spec I can change it up a bit from time to time with my hunter. I am mostly MM but when I want to melee with my Pet I can do that too now
It is not that melee sv is not as popular as old range SV. It is hunter as a whole that is not popular atm as well as other range dps. BFA is a bit more melee centric where melee have more advantage whether in pvp or pve. Mages, warlock, elemental shamans are all complaining that melee is very strong in BFA. Melee SV is actually very popular among hunters atm. If they are not BM they are SV. My MM fav spec is actually the one that needs attention lolz
MM is significantly more popular than SV… you really do have a knack for making stuff up as you go along, don’t you?
Very poor attempt at deflection.
nah they are not. nice try though haha. Good luck on your whining. Who knows, there is still next xpac after shadowlands. Maybe you will get your SV range back in 2022 
Attacking a post for saying “No one likes x” is incredibly immature. Obviously it is not literally “no one”. No matter how much something is disliked, no matter how one-sided something seems, there will always be a subset of people supporting the unpopular side. It’s a hyperbole to emphasise how few people want the ideas you’re proposing to see the light of day.
Plus, when you’re saying “a lot of people love the melee spec” that’s really not that accurate given, even if you don’t believe the data, Blizzard themselves have said it’s a niche spec.
As you said, FFXIV examples really don’t work here. AFAIK, red mage is something that has already existed. It didn’t replace something that previously existed, and it’s not even clear whether the people who play it like it specifically because of the melee aspects (a point that applies to SV as well, by the way, and isn’t pointed out nearly often enough). It’s also egregious to try to justify the change by saying that mages will just move on and at least some of them will welcome the change. This leads to my next point…
It’s really odd to use melee Survival as backup here and all the same arguments people used to justify that, given how it turned out. We heard all this before: making Survival melee is much-needed because the class needs to “evolve”, it will attract new players, some existing players will like it, etc… but when push came to shove it didn’t turn out like that. The overwhelming majority of Hunters stayed far away from melee Survival and it mostly failed to pull any significant amount of people into the class (Hunter representation actually dropped quite steeply going into 7.0). As for the “evolution” talk, that’s mostly just you making the tired-old fallacy of “change for the sake of change”. Saying that a design needs to “evolve” is all-to-often a codeword for excusing brash, poorly-planned, unpopular changes that ultimately make something worse.
If anything, Survival has thoroughly proven that something like this should never be done again. I mean, walk this through. Try to put aside your melee bias for a second. New players coming to this game and picking a class will look at Hunters and right away identify that they are the only class that can use ranged weapons. That’s the most obvious, distinguishing difference to the identity and style of the class. How many, realistically, will look at that class and pick option 3 which is “be melee like half of the rest of the classes”? Same with mages. Who’s going to look at a powerful, versatile, spellcaster class that can specialise in one of the three major schools of magic and go “meh, let’s go for the melee DPS option”. Sure, some would. But most won’t, and this is exactly how it turned out with SV. Melee players really need to stop treating melee as a silver bullet and recognise that not everyone likes it and its not welcome in classes that have always been all-ranged. It’s selfish and short-sighted.
The problem with your post is that it assumes Blizzard is way more data-driven and rational than they actually are. The people who brought melee Survival into the game are the same people who tried to argue, for example, that Shamans were not undertuned in 6.0 and that people just had that impression because they were confused by the number squish. This was Celestalon, of course. He also pretty proudly dismissed not just simulation data but actual log data of specs in the real raiding environment (e.g. Feral Druid in Legion). It was the same team that decided that people’s problem with MM in early Legion was that Vulnerable wasn’t RNG enough. There are many examples in WoD and Legion, and even BFA, of this sort of careless, haphazard, developer-first approach to class design.
If they looked at the data they would not have removed ranged Survival, period. It’s a spec that commanded a pretty sizeable playerbase. It was an extremely popular spec for several years leading up to Legion’s announcement so there’s really no point where they could point to the spec and say “it isn’t doing well, what can we change up?”.
Plus, they have discussed Survival’s representation. They didn’t turn around and say “Raid data is actually misrepresentative and contrary to popular belief we find many people are playing Survival”. They said “we knew we were making a niche spec”, and “we think most Hunters are Hunters because they want to be ranged”. Now, I don’t buy that: I think they did expect Survival to end up being way more popular than it actually was in Legion. But whether or not it’s true, the most succinct and accurate way to describe Blizzard’s stance is that they think Survival is “expectedly unpopular”.
P.S.
The problem people have with attitudes like this is that when it comes to discussing the ranged specs you are over-generalising and dismissing the differences, but when it comes to the spec as melee you have to get so incredibly hyper-specific and every difference counts. It’s a clear double-standard even if you didn’t consciously mean it. It really does feel like we aren’t allowed to explore ranged archetypes for fear of making them too similar but we can never stop making new melee specs and there’s always some new and “totally unique” combination that absolutely must be its own spec, existing specs be damned.
And now, people who like ranged weapons can no longer “change it up a bit” as effectively or as often since we are down 1 out of 3 ranged DPS options. How is that fair?
You did not need a melee spec to fight alongside your pet every once in a while. All the ranged Hunter specs have been able to fight at full effectiveness in melee range since 5.0.
Uh, yes. Yes they are. MM is far ahead in representation in all raid difficulties as well as M+. Obviously MM is nowhere in PvP, but PvP’s playerbase is much smaller than that of PvE.
Thank goodness.
If you compare SV representation for PvE/raids at mythic level with the highest difficulties in the older days. Current SV is nowhere near RSV in popularity/rep.
For mythic EP, SV sits at 0.5% rep compared to RSV which when we had it, it never really went below 2%. RSV was usually between 3-7% of all specs.
The hunter class as a whole, in PvE, is currently sitting at the 9.0-9.1% rep mark.
(Which happens to be, in median, about the same as what we had back in the days of Cata-WoD). Below, you can find each spec.
Sure, the Hunter class is not currently at an all-time high in terms of representation. Though the only big drop we can see today compared to the past where we had RSV, is that MSV now barely has any representation in PvE.
Beast Mastery holds a 7.4% rep amongst all specs.
Marksmanship is at 1.2%, amongst all specs.
MSV is at 0.5%, amongst all specs.
What has changed, is that SV is now at 0.5% instead of the usual 3-7%, it held a median usually around 3.4-4.1% when it was still RSV.
Here you have the graph from MoP up until today:
https://www.worldofwargraphs.com/sv/pve-stats/classes/hunterIf you scroll down slightly, you will notice that green line suddenly plummets to basically nothing, barely rising at all up until today. That is SV.
When it dropped to the bottom, that was when the devs announced that we were getting melee SV as a replacement for ranged SV. Along with what they did to RSV at the time, basically destroying it, performance-wise.
Here’s the graph for SV in rated PvP:
https://www.worldofwargraphs.com/sv/pvp-stats/classes/hunter/survivalCurrent MSV so far hasn’t beaten RSV’s high peaks in representation.
Note: Legion dropped in August 2016.
In rated PvP, yes. Otherwise, no.
kinda wild how everyone who likes MSV and mocks people for wanting RSV is 200 ilvl with no relevant/serious endgame experience
makes you think huh
To be fair, I’ve seen dedicated melee SV players with significant PvE progress. Arctos and Amirror come to mind, there was also another one way back but I forget the name.
But it does anecdotally feel like on average the people who come to SV threads, especially in General Discussion, have little investment in the class. In that last thread in GD every other post was someone posting from a DH or Paladin or whatever saying Survival made them make a Hunter alt for the first time so it must stay melee.
If only there was another spec that was melee with a pet before survival came along and removed one of the three only bow specs in the game. Because hey, we need more melee
oh i know plenty of survival mains who are good players with fantastic arena/raiding progress. dilly himself is in this thread. it just amuses me greatly that the people who vocally shout down people who want their old spec back are always the people with a level 62 survival hunter alt that they just LOVE playing lmao