First of all I completely agree that Survival should be a ranged spec. Hunter is a ranged class and it is perceived as a ranged class by the community which is important in relation to group content.
To be honest, I do think SV and MM in practice played very similar in WOD. I know people don’t like to hear that and I’m not saying that SV and MM have same fantasy at all. Both specs can be ranged and still be completely different. They just weren’t very different in WOD in relation to practical gameplay in my opinion. But they have the potential to be. SV doesn’t have to be melee to differentiate it from MM.
However, for SV to be it’s own unique spec I think it should embrace it’s fantasy as a ranged dot/poison/trap much more than it did in WOD. Simple mechanics like Serpent Sting being extended by cobra shot and applied automatically by multishot is just way too boring in my opinion. It is far from enough to really build the spec around it’s fantasy. The specs need to have much more intelligent synergy between the dots, the shots and the traps. In my opinion. I felt SV in WOD was pretty fun but in my opinion the spec lacked synergy. In my eyes the spec was just a lot of random abilities thrown together.
But overall SV should be a ranged dot spec. End of story