

Why did it become a weird amalgamation of beast mastery, pre-legion survival, and legion survival with the worst parts of each? Either turn Survival back into a ranged spec, or keep it fully melee. That’s not to say the playstyle is bad, but the spec is clearly being pulled in different directions by competing interests and someone needs to put their foot down in 9.0. The result is a spec with a very troubled direction. Additionally, they found Legion Survival was way too different from the other Hunter specs to be practical, to the point where it was effectively a different class, so they probably went with Kill Command over Flanking Strike (and allowed MM to talent into Serpent Sting) to help create familiarity with the players of those specs. So the “scrapper/tinker/utilitarian” aspects in Serpent Sting and Wildfire Bomb are included to make the spec more unique. Problem is, you really can’t come up with an identity for melee Hunters that doesn’t lean heavily on pets if you tried, you would end up with something mostly indistinguishable from a rogue.

They want the spec to be melee as a differentiating factor to Marksmanship (I personally think this is misguided but this is their reasoning). The spec’s history is a big part of why the toolkit is “factionalised” into different themes. But yes, Raptor Strike and Kill Command are problem areas.
