I dont think we are.
Statistically, melee meatheads dont like SV. They like your heavy muscle, platemail fantasies, or your dodging, bobbing/weaving leather monks and rogues. And that is not a tiny niche. Its a massive segment of the WoW playerbase.
The tiny niche being satisfied with SV can’t get what they want anywhere else. There is no equivalent to modern SV in any other class in the game. Yes… there are some specs that have similar mobility. There are some abilities in melee classes that allow them to do a little damage from range. But there is no hybrid skirmisher spec besides SV and it wouldnt fit anywhere else.
Why wouldnt it fit anywhere else? Because Hunter has always been intended to be at least partially hybrid. No, not fully melee like the classes that got platemail at 40. But they did get mail at 40. Shamans too, but unlike the Shaman class, which had a spec dedicated to melee DPS, one for healing and one for ranged DPS, the hunter had all 3 specs made fully ranged because all three trees were mostly ranged and many melee abilities were baseline. The fantasy, the aesthetic and the framework existed forever. All hunters were in some way hybrid. The only thing that was missing after cata was the melee weapon.
IMO, the argument to make a 4th spec, or a talent or anything to make some spec or another fully melee is just more bad design. We dont need another chonky hitting fully melee spec. We dont need another tank spec. We dont need a 4th spec in hunter to preserve all the melee in one spec.
IMO, they should give the whole class access to some melee abilities. They should make the whole class primarily ranged. The main DPS rotation should be ranged. But they need to design encounters to give melee an inherent purpose, and hunters’ ability to be effective or useful in melee range (moreso than other ranged DPS) should be an advantage.
Bepples, you are definitely right. In current WoW design, melee is a disadvantage. A hunter in the WoW universe would never go into melee because all his unique utility is at range. He can stay safer at range, and do damage while his pet keeps his enemy pinned down. Melee can only justify its existence with tanking roles or unique utility. Warriors, Paladins, DKs, Monks, and DHs actually get both. But that’s bad design.
In real life, and historically in RPGs, especially multiplayer experiences, range and melee both had advantages and disadvantages. WoW, in the interest of convenience, removed many of the inherent disadvantages from all ranged classes and specs. Casters don’t OOM any more. They all have some version of build/spend. Mana is just blue “energy”. Hunter’s dont run out of ammo, they dont have to reduce their DPS to recover mana. They dont have a minimum range. They dont have to do anything that justifies their high damage output from relative safety. None of the ranged classes do. That makes melee obsolete. That is bad design.
Im not suggesting all of these things should be brought back, but good design would not lean on unique utility to help melee dps. Good design doesn’t need every melee to have a massive gap closer or multiples to compete against ranged classes in PvP. Good design needs to find ways to make melee inherently useful without making ranged feel horrible. In that environment there can be a great many reasons a gunter would take pride in his/her ability to weave into melee.