I personally wouldn't mind if that idea were implemented, so long as the Survival Hunter took a corresponding hit to their ranged DPS to compensate for good melee capabilities. Because it wouldn't be at all balanced if they could do ranged DPS like a mage and melee DPS like a rogue, all while being supported by a pet.

And that's the unfortunate problem with the idea. It's great if you can make it work, but it's hard to make a melee dps spec for a ranged dps class and have it be balanced.

lol, I want my hunter to be a rogue with a pet.

Exactly. Hunters in melee are slightly more effective than level 20 spells.

@DeathPaladin

Hell to the no! As a devout Survival hunter, I can already say that our DPS is shameful compared to the other trees. I don't want to give up MORE ranged DPS for whatever compensatory melee augmentations they might offer. Where would that leave us? Poor ranged, poor melee.

That would be great if melee hunters were viable.

While they're at it, they can go ahead and give shamans back our tanking tree; turn the threat reduction on our parry talent into a threat bonus, bring back shield specialization... basically put back everything they took out between vanilla and now, and then extend it out to 80.

So long as they dont do a "we're increasing PvP viability with extra melee damage, so we're nerfing endgame PvE ranged damage to compensate" Then that sounds like gravy.

"Hell to the no! As a devout Survival hunter, I can already say that our DPS is shameful compared to the other trees. I don't want to give up MORE ranged DPS for whatever compensatory melee augmentations they might offer. Where would that leave us? Poor ranged, poor melee."

I was poor with my wording. The first part of my post was illustrating why it would be a bad idea, because since Hunter is a ranged DPS class, making Survival competative in melee defeats the purpose of being a Hunter. It would either be gimped, because you would have to kill the class's purpose for the sake of the spec, or overpowered, because the hunter would be able to out dps everyone else because they wouldn't give a damn about range.

Why does anyone want to roll a hunter and melee? If you really want to get in melee combat, roll a melee class! Roll a rogue or a dps warrior or a Death Knight.

Are hunters all ranged and not a threat in melee range? Maybe. And.. so? A rogue is all melee and not a threat if you can keep him at range. It's PART OF THE CLASS. I continue to wonder aboutBlizzard's tendency to give classes bits and pieces from other classes. A hunter is a ranged dps class with pet capabilities. The proper response to a hunter who complains that they aren't really good melee is derision. If you're a hunter and you regularly let someone get into melee range for enough time that they can kill you, you're not a good hunter.

my little brother has this problem... he is a BM hunter and he does nothing but melee when he is out with his pet. i laugh at him because of all the armor damage he takes and his repair bills, but being a MM hunter myself, he does pretty well meleeing his way through, i can kill a target before it even gets close to me, seeing how my cat cant dps more than i can. but i am down with uping the melee for hunters. there are those situations that arise that call for a little more for the hunters in that area, but not too much, just enough.