Where did Blizzard get the idea that there is a significant demand for a meleeonlyhunter spec? Of course I remember well, certain individuals begging for it in the early days (even now?), and even gearing specifically for it when hunters were able to carry a 2H/2x1H as well as a gun/bow. I was pretty sure it was just an extremely vocal minority, and I played a hunter a ton through Vanilla and TBC.
Having said that, I was extremely disappointed when Blizzard completely removed our melee weapons, but that was because I loved using them a part of the complete toolkit.
It was a ton of fun doing the ol' - big fat Raptor Strike crit/Wing Clip and kite away - for example.
I haven't seriously played hunter for a long time now, so perhaps I'm out of touch, but I fail to understand why Blizzard flipped 100% the other way for SURV. Just give back the melee weapon skills, and done.
I have an idea about this. The premise is that the Blizzard idea of class fantasy is fucked up by a nostalgia bigger than any player may feel. There must be someone in their dev team that dusted off these old concepts that were (rightfully so) buried under the label "mistakes" and forced them to become alive. Melee hunters are just one part of the tragic story (they also wanted to copy Beastlords maybe, who the fuck knows?).
I never played hunter as a raiding main past TBC, but it's certainly one of my most played characters and I dedicated to the class a fuckton of time over 11 years. My hunter tamed every special pet in the world (all spirit beasts and taming challenges) and got every special item it could get except Rohk'Delar, because in vanilla nobody helped alts getting important shit (not people I knew back then at least).
I consider myself a good hunter, hell I can even PvP with it, something I hardly do if not forced.
My idea of hunter goes back to vanilla: find a loyal friend, explore the wilds, learn skills from other animals and teach them to your best friend, keep him happy and he'll fight for you until dead. That's my concept of hunter, with a bow or a gun, able to do amazing shots from a very long distance (41 yards vs 35 for other ranged classes, remember?) and to perform an amazing amount of tricks to survive in any circumstance: feign death, various traps, disengage, deterrence, stings, eagle eye, eyes of the beast, etc.
The specializations were the hunter focus: their pet, their weapon, their traps and tricks. Somehow these became their pets (plural), their weapon without pet (wtf?) and melee (which is a freaking joke, thankfully there is the pet at least).
Gameplay: since the change hunters received that swapped mana with focus as their resource, the class has been built on a builder-spender system. Steady/Cobra shots were the builders and had to be weaved into the priority list, according to the chosen spec and adapting to different gameplay situations to maximize efficiency and damage. The builder was spammable and I dare say, for a reason. Now, unless you take Chimera Shot (a talent) for BM or Steady Focus (a talent) for MM, you're there watching paint dry until you have enough resources to play the game the way it's meant to be played (or they think it is).
In other words, if you don't pick Chimera as BM, you have empty globals and can be completely excited watching your focus bar replenishing, until you can do something else. You can't lose dps by using one builder too many or capping focus (hell, I'd like to see a hunter capping if not afk): you just wait.
Now if something changed very recently I don't know, but this was the broad picture and as a long time BM fan, I didn't like it at all.
Also the new Stampede sucks. I fucking hate it and I want the other one back.
Survival: I can see adding diversity, but SV had its theme, now stolen by MM: magical damage instead of physical: serpent sting, explosive shot, black arrow, etc. With the introduction of Multistrike in WoD, it was quite good in Highmaul, a lot of people still appreciated it, even with the loss of Kill Shot (why? oh why did they have to prune it?).
A melee spec will be good to fuck around, even if with Demon Hunters in the game, nobody needed more melees into the equation. Boss asses are gonna be busy!!!