That's only this tier. If you look back to the start of Legion, Demo is consistently ahead of Survival and sometimes doing really well. What characterises Survival's unpopularity is it's consistency.
It's not just a tuning issue. That's extremely naive. There have been tiers where Survival does very well and it still remains one of the least-played specs. Blizzard themselves acknowledges that not many Hunters want to play a melee spec.
Survival was routinely popular even when it wasn't the best. An example of this is Siege of Orgrimmar where it had lower performance than BM but was still more popular.
Besides, even if this were true, at least it would mean ranged Survival was sometimes popular, unlike melee Survival.
I would appreciate it if you stopped dropping uninformed opinions in the thread.
Cool story. You're either misremembering or lying. Hunters were meant to use their ranged toolkit as much as possible. Yes, even as Survival with melee-buffing talents. Believe it or not, specs in Vanilla did not function as they do now as distinct entities that define your playstyle and gameplay. Survival buffing melee spells did not mean you no longer used your ranged weapon and abilities that came with the class. The melee buffs of Survival were for situational usage. A Hunter primarily sticking to melee is just not something Blizzard envisioned for the class.
https://i.imgur.com/kBVr5Uc.png
There's the manual page from 2004. Read the very first sentence, why don't you.
Uh, no, they aren't. Go look at any PvE representation statistics. Survival is consistently one of the least played specs. If you want to talk about PvP, Survival coasts on the overnerfing of BM and MM. Besides, very few people participate in rated PvP compared to raiding to begin with, and Survival's representation is still far behind what it was when the spec was ranged.
Using this thread to justify your misinformed belief that Survival is a popular spec is spectacularly absurd. And then you have the gall to turn around and say I'm the one using only "very biased opinions".
MM was not the #1 DPS by a large amount in BoD but it still saw almost just as much participation as BM. All it takes is for MM to be competitive and it sees play. Then you have Survival, which is perpetually underplayed even when it is ahead of the other Hunter specs (see: Uldir).
Did not read the rest of your post after this sentence because I can safely assume it's nonsense as is usual from you.
You hate the class, only like the iteration of the spec that was least adhering to the class identity out of all of them, and then wonder why Hunters want something different to what you want to play in the class. You really are something else.
P.S. Black Arrow and Explosive Shot were both ranged Survival abilities. Thanks for including this nugget of maximum cluelessness.