While I agree that Survival should go back to something based on its MoP iteration, I disagree on these points:
- Marksmanship being stale
- Survival being a hybrid of BM and MM
First point: Marksmanship does typically have movement restrictions but that doesn’t mean it’s stale and immobile all the time. It could always use a significant part of its toolkit while moving and there is appeal to those hardcasted, heavy-hitting Aimed Shots. It’s the spec that has a really long range and nice burst damage. I have a blast with it in battlegrounds even if it sucks in 1v1 and arenas. I always preferred ranged Survival when it existed but Survival wasn’t just a better MM; it was a different playstyle and identity.
Second point: This comes up a lot on the forums but it doesn’t make much sense. Survival had just as much pet interaction as MM did i.e. it began and ended with having a pet. I guess you could argue that its full mobility made it feel a bit like BM but usually if I heard someone describing a spec as a middle ground between two other specs I would expect it to share mechanical and thematic aspects of those two specs which Survival really didn’t (barring some weirdness with how Arcane Shot was distributed in Warlords of Draenor).