Originally Posted by
Razion
Whether you agree with the sentiment or not, this was the agreed upon generalization within the community around the time of Legion. This is likely what led to the resulting split of Survival to Melee, in order to make it more distinct from the other specs. You may not personally think it was lacking in its own identity, but clearly even in this thread all these years later this issue is still fairly divisive - despite Survival having such a lower representation in players after the rework.
Survival was lacking in some kind of cohesive identity, and it just happened to be that they could make it that much more different to the other specs at the time. BM was "THE" pet spec, MM was "THE" shooter spec. SV was just "other" shooter spec, or even "other" pet spec.
Other specs at the time of Legion had similar identity issues. Rogue specs had to differentiate themselves into Pirates, Ninjas, and Poisoners in order to make themselves sufficiently different, Warriors had to distinctly focus on the size and manner of wielding weapons in order to keep themselves different. But these are other examples.
Even though it, Survival, had its own share of personality with venoms and traps and these 'other' tools that were generally speaking part of the Hunter fantasy as a whole and shared around the other two specs, they could still somehow lean into the other specs. Animal venom? Makes sense as part of a spec that focuses on beasts, that would have animal venom, or would be part of a sharpshooter spec that had a focus on shooting specialty arrows. This is the crutch of a lot of why SV was seen as just other and not it's own thing -- it could have led into other specs with their own explanations, whereas in other specs like Fire, Frost, Arcane, it would have been near impossible to explain why a Fire Mage is using a Frost spell -- they had distinct different tools and spells comparatively to say Hunter at the time which was a lot more general. But this is perhaps a larger issue on classes that has fantasy that revolves entirely around weapons and less to do with their own unique brand of magic and how those branches of magic are so visually distinct and special in their own right. That's another discussion.
And, again, this is mostly a statement on the mentality at the time. Please don't take this as an attack on you or your supposed preference for old ranged Survival, which is a perfectly valid preference to have. This is just what was the thoughts around the community at the time and was probably what ultimately led to having Survival change to melee -- to trace back further to its roots that made it even more unique to BM and MM. SV was the one that got the short end of the stick. Was it fair? Probably not. Should Hunter have gotten a fourth spec or had SV expanded on further to solidify how it could be different from MM or BM? I mean, it could have very well been possible. Even now though, what most people seem to be clamoring for is not a return of Survival to be even more divergent and special in its own right but rather just as it was. It seems to me when these discussions start what people seem to be missing is the gameplay of old ranged Survival and while the visual fantasy is there and important to the concept, it could be there in the other specs and I'm not sure it would be as radical a separation of fantasy as is being portrayed here often enough.
So while ultimately I can't say I agree with you, please understand that the direction of ranged SV was lacking, and it perhaps wasn't as obvious on expanding the flavor of SV. What would the solution have been -- okay, so they get a different animal venom for each ranged attack, maybe they're the only ones with traps... would that have worked? Mechanically, logically, yes. But in terms of being sufficient fantasy? I'm not as sure. SV still may have been perceived as "the MM with green arrows". Maybe the criticisms we would be dealing with now would be on the other foot and maybe people would have been saying it would have been a good opportunity to try melee Hunter - as it was in the past. To me it's pretty blatant that SV was the spec that was the least distinct, and that melee is the most distinct direction of Hunter that they have gotten in a very long time. It may be regrettable how things turned out to those who loved ranged SV, but I think this was ultimately the correct choice in terms of fulfilling a more distinct fantasy for the expansion that focused on having specs as different as possible.
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