The spec really isn’t fine; it’s a constant source of issues. They’ve spent an inordinate amount of effort maintaining the spec over the past two expansions only for it to consistently fail to pull in many players. The thing it does best is dividing the class and diluting its identity.
Being melee really is the main point of conflict, which seems silly because so little of the spec is exclusively melee these days. Wildfire Bomb and Serpent Sting are both solid foundations for a good ranged spec like old Survival, but it clashes with Raptor Strike on account of it being melee and Kill Command on account of it being BM-based.
Not sure what SV’s current versatility (still doesn’t make up for it being a melee spec, btw) has to do with a talented ranged option being untenable. Even with a damage nerf, taking current SV and doing a simple transition to ranged by replacement would make it enormously more powerful and useful. Being melee is the key thing that is keeping the spec from being desirable in end-game content outside of arenas right now. Even people who like the melee aspect admit this. If the spec had the ability to go ranged, it would be peer-pressured left-and-right to take that talent in ALL situations, even in arenas. It is very, very rare for melee to be by itself more desirable than ranged; you can probably count on one hand the amount of times it has happened. The only reasons the talent would not be used is if a) its such a huge damage nerf that the ranged version of the spec is unviable (it would have to be a LOT because look how desirable BM still is despite literally being bottom-tier damage) or b) RP reasons.
You know I’m basing my post on what I’ve read from Survival Hunters too? It’s very counter-intuitive to argue that they like the melee aspect of Survival on account of the parts that minimise the melee aspect. The #1 reason I hear for people liking Survival is rotational flow, along with high single-target damage. That is not predicated on being melee. Ranged SV had both those things. It’s clear that being melee keeps far more people away from the spec than it brings people to it. Blizzard thinks this is the case, too. “Most versatile melee spec” doesn’t mean much when ranged specs are by-default more versatile regardless; especially with BM being in the same class.
For me the primary reason is that both iterations of melee Survival lean heavily on the pet aspect. It’s very jarring to essentially have ranged and melee BM in the same class, especially considering the whole point of making SV melee in the first place was ostensibly to eliminate similarities to another Hunter spec (in that case: MM). And it makes sense; if you had a melee Hunter identity that didn’t lean on the pet aspect, it would look more like a Warrior than a Hunter.