Survival chance of it being a Melee/Ranged hybrid?

[Gurg]

There is a massive amount of player who just main whatever is good.

That said it's still a terrible decision by Blizzard to even create this spec.

From my standpoint it should be hunters 4th spec. Sentinel. Tracker. Name doesnt really matter much since we have stupid names like Outlaw for a spec.

[Polybius]

No Hunter specs should have been melee.

Generally those who oppose melee specs don't know how to play them.

Beast Master is just one button away from becoming melee.

[Deleted]

Generally those who oppose melee specs don't know how to play them.

Beast Master is just one button away from becoming melee.

Never really thought about it that way, but it's actually true.
Kinda funny how stuff like kill command and dire beast would actually work really damn well with a melee-class.

[threads]

There is a massive amount of player who just main whatever is good.

That said it's still a terrible decision by Blizzard to even create this spec.

amazingly BM is the most played spec even though it's dps is considered "lowest". it's almost as if people just want to be a mobile ranged like they were since wrath.

[Shinrayz]

They turned survi upside down this xpac, you think they will reroll that on 8.0? I doubt that.

[ymirsson]

amazingly BM is the most played spec even though it's dps is considered "lowest". it's almost as if people just want to be a mobile ranged like they were since wrath.

Maybe they just want to be a meme ranged since forever?

[Perkunas]

Ehhh I'd say its actually a bit of both. Still plenty of salty pre-legion survival hunters around.

I'm one! I absolutely despise the new Survival. It was my favorite PVP class from Cata through MoP and now it's just.... BLAH

[FAILoZOFF]

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. BM requires a revamp too so it would align very well.
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 kind of like tandem for hunter, more or less how it works for surv now, where it procs something like "vulnerable" debuff increasing hunters own damage (kind of like Quinns 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 twist of MM and it could be possible to imprelemt such talents into MM tree to regain that "original" feel.