and by "complete" I don't mean to turn them upside down for no good reason, more like "set things right this time", because in Legion all specs feel and play like a total, poorly thought out mess, both by theme and gameplay.
TBH I'd scrap idea of survival spec entirely. Cataclysm brought us idea of "specs" we know today, but before that we were playing classes, that happened to be able to follow certain path that would lead them to become better at what they do. So while it works for paladins to have 3 specs, as they have 3 possible roles to perform, it does not quite fit all classes and so some specs feel kind of forced as "survival" is just a generic hunter toolkit (traps, camouflage, feign death etc) no hunter should be ever left without. I was glad to hear they decided to just stick to 2 specs for DHs.
For hunters tho, I'd go for option for BM hunter to be both, melee and ranged at will in a way Fwarriors had option to use 1handers or 2handers. Perhaps there could be slight TAX for ranged option compared to melee but nothing too big, say a ~5% difference, and with as small change in play style as possible, just an option to go melee or ranged. BM requires a revamp too so it would align very well.
I am pretty sure its not all that hard to code abilities to change their functionality based on either equipped weapon type or some kind of stance (something like boomie talent http://www.wowhead.com/spell=202360, unusable in combat, or glad stance named "Way of the Mok'Natha") where it would change abilities between their melee and ranged version:
Raptor Strike <---> Cobra Shot ST filler
Carve <---> Multi-Shot AoE filler
Moongose Bite <---> Chimera Shot
Harpoon <---> Disengage
Muzzle <--->Counter Shot
etc
option for 2hander or dual-wield would be welcome too, even if not totally balanced.
overall, mechanically It could very well work 1:1 with little to no problem too as now even agi trinkets work for both melee and ranged attacks.
For MMs "fantasy" is strictly ranged combat obviously, but pet could either:
- be mostly an utility tool, and provide close to no damage, lets say ~3% of overall MM damage
- or pet could work in tandem with hunter, more or less how it works for surv now, where it procs something like "vulnerable" debuff increasing hunters own damage (kind
of like Quinn's pet from LoL)
- or I'd scap idea of autoshotts and make pet perform that autoattack damage for hunter, while hunter fires just hard hitters in a way casters do. Monks were supposed to be a class with no autoattack but Blizzard has scapped the idea, so I don't know.
Pre-Legion surv felt and played a lot like a weird twist of MM and I can see possibility to implement such talents into MM tree to regain that "original" surv feel.
In before you start to scream at me for "destroying" legion surv spec you happened to like:
As I said above, marksman's could choose to play "regular" marksman or more in a way old surv did (explosive shot instead of aimed, serpent sting, black arrow(It never fit hunter nor surv theme imo, such a random spell) etc), so really just a names of few abilities would change, that means hunters would have right of the bat not 3 styles of play/themes but 4, despite 2 specs, just without all the shenanigans that would come with trying to make 4 completely unique specs where there is a common base anyway, this way we could avoid problem with different loot tables and such. Basically MM could play like they always did, people that liked old surv would hgave it too, just under different spec name, and Bm, BMs would have to... L2P a bit as I can see bit of shift from pet doing 80% of the work to more active gameplay. For better in all honestly as even blizzard seems to have a problem with "AI specs" which is hard to balance, specially in PvP.