It was all melee’ish, you’re right about that. But as I mention above, it wasn’t a viable melee spec – The spec tree was more used to supplement either MM or BM… You could use it for solo and PvP, but raiding was mainly MM. It was always an illusion of choice that most classes dealt with.
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Wyvern Sting
It’s been linked to you several times by now, I don’t know why you keep ignoring it?
Not only was that ability the literal capstone talent of the SV talent category in the majority of Vanilla’s “life”, it also supports the basis of how SV was in fact designed to focus primarily on the design theme, and space, of survivability and utility, on this part of the general core design of the hunter class. In other words, the SV talent category was not designed with the idea of providing a unique, and separate combat playstyle and/or theme, which was primarily based around the idea of melee combat, not even as an option.
While Wyvern Sting was a useful ability, and I somewhat agree with your assessment of it–it wasn’t the original capstone talent and unfortunately does not satisfy the question.
This wasn’t a condition of your prior request, which makes what you said here irrelevant to your previous argument.
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Oh, I like you! 
Nevertheless, I do not believe that Wyvern Sting adequately establishes a premise for RSV. But, as you have said, it does promote the utilitarian fantasy–the true locus for SV, which populated a total of over 60% of the SV Talent Category.
So you enjoy msv then? Cuz current sv is very much melee focused.
It brought sexy back but that didn’t mean sexy stayed longer than 2 minutes. Even so, I’m not convinced to buy DF just yet. Because this is just the current tier set bonus. When the rework comes, some things will need to be baked in permanently.
It’s going to take some more moving parts.
Off topic: I found my post history but I guess I need to post on this alt for it. Not ideal.
Switch the mog on this character right now to your normal one
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I believe that because the re-work to melee wasnt well received is more of a argument to change the spec to a different role then not. If the spec isnt as popular as the other 2 in that role, why have it try to compete in that role? Now BM and MM have another option that doesn’t interfere with what they a currently doing so noone has to compromise.
I agree that “pet tanking” might be a bif iffy for positioning, but I dont think itd be impossible to just implement the pet having radius check to stay within about 20-25 yrd of the SV Hunter. At most it might take a bit of very minor managing of very particular fights. And besides the new “fantasy” could be more of the close bound with pet. You fight side by side with it and share each other’s pain.
I mean, there’s always going to be a least popular spec on a 3 DPS class. Look at Arcane, Affliction, or Assassination.
Usually it’s not always the same one.
Before SV was melee, there was no “typically less popular” Hunter spec.
Tbf Assassination is usually the one for rogues
isn’t feral always less popular than boomkin? 
think BM has always been by far the most popular hunter spec, so MM and RSV just handed the “least popular” hunter spec back and forth
BM was less played than both of those in WotLK and Cata.
There really isn’t a distinguishable pattern of “most popular” and “least popular” specs before Legion. Each one of their three had their time in the spotlight and their time in the dumps. It’s only with melee SV that we have a Hunter spec that’s usually less played, and by a lot.
Maybe they should rework BM in wotlk then, since apparently “least popular” is a green flag to rework specs?
I’m still not sure what you’re trying to prove here with the population point. Should the least played spec of any given class receive an immediate rework? Should the least played spec just get a lot of buffs until it’s not the least played?
They did. After that stretch of unpopularity they added Kill Command and Beast Cleave to make it a more interactive and higher performance spec. Ironically they were basically copying the same template for SV (6 second signature + reliable AoE attached to multishot) but the melee fanatics are too focused on the MM - SV reductionism because they don’t understand the history of the class well.
Well it wouldn’t be immediate, would it? This is a chronic problem.
So, if they rework Assassination (usually least played Rogue spec) to something else, and then Sub becomes the least played, what do they do then? Rework that? What happens then when Outlaw is the least played?
It seems like a permanent problem unless each spec has 33.3% population?
No, like right now in classic wotlk? If it’s the least played, they should change it in classic.
So we could also add in BM - SV redundancy too then. Kind of sucks for RSV fans if not only it was very similar to MM it was also similar to BM too. No wonder they changed it
Do you know what “chronic” means? This isn’t it.
Class reworks aren’t on the table for classic because it’s meant to be a mostly authentic experience. I would love if we had the MoP design. I would even love if we had some elements like Trick Shots for MM. But it’s not on the table.
Never mind the fact that they all felt distinct by WoD, but the fact that BM and MM both remained ranged yet diverged even further with their respective reworks in Legion showed that having a unique ranged SV would have been no problem at all. In fact it would have been significantly easier than making SV melee, and it would have had a better outcome.