i’ve always said, out of all 3 hunter specs, Beast Mastery should have been the one that got changed to a melee class for Legion, not Survival. Because out of all three specs, BM was always the most boring, simplistic, and in dire need of a change at the time.
Makes sense lorewise too, considering Beast Mastery is the spec that apparently has the most understanding, strongest connection, and strongest bonds to their animals, so makes sense that they’d learn from, adopt animalistic traits, create an animal fighting style (melee), and willingly choose to fight along side their animals. Meanwhile survival lorewise is literally based on it’s namesake, maximizing survival, so they’d be more about stalking their prey/hiding in the shadows (camouflage), using traps, poisons, and keeping their enemies at a distance (ranged).
Out of all 3 specs of hunters, SV pre 7.0, especially during Warlords of Draenor, was the most unique hunter spec ever. A dot based hunter spec, where your rotation and damage was focused on keeping optimal dot uptime (explosive shot, black arrow, serpent sting) and weaving normal attacks in-between. 6.2 as a Survival Hunter was my most favorite time and fun I experienced ever playing hunter and in my honest opinion was the greatest hunter spec there ever was.
Unfortunately now both remaining ranged hunter classes are stale, they have boring plain attacks, especially ever since late Legion and BFA which stripped most hunter attacks of their visual flare or visually fun nature, which was the last thing they had going for them, so as a result now hunters are just stuck with 3 mediocre and boring specs which are in no way unique, standout, or exciting.
That and also formerly fun or unique talents are essentially dead in the water and have not been a viable option for multiple numerous patches and expansions at this point, those being Barrage (not since 8.1), Murder of Crows (Not since 7.2), Piercing Shot (not since 6.2), Stampede (not since 6.2), and Chimera Shot (Not since 6.0). …Essentially been stuck with the same few talent choices for over 2 expansions straight, especially Marksman, which has been hardstuck in the same literal talent build for ST or AOE for multiple patches now.