I did some number crunching on this before but I haven't completely expressed it in all the variables so I havn't added it to my original post. Also these numbers are from memory(could be a litle off)

You have 500 dps with the highest rank multi and aimed. 479 dps using highest aimed and rank 1 multi. 405 dps with rank 1 multi and aimed. These numbers all assume 25% crit. FD drinking using the highest rank of both spells will put you at 410 overall. You can do 500 dps for about 3 mintues before you run out of mana. 479 dps for almost 6 minutes. 405 dps forever. Seems like the best strat for most fights over 6 minutes is to use rank 1 multi and rank 6 aimed until you run out of mana, then use rank 1 multi and aimed until your target it dead. Although using rank 1 multi and aimed is lower dps than fd drinking, I figured the fight would have to be longer than 2 hours before your dps would drop below 410.

For fights between 3-6 minutes you can switch between rank 1 multi and rank 5 to keep you mana pool% the same as your targets health%. This would mean a total dps between 479 and 500. And for fights less than 3 minutes you can use highest rank on both spells and throw in a serpent to keep you mana pool the same sa your targets. But remember, serpent also consumes a tick of regen and will net cost you 291 mana(250 mana cost + 41 tick).

Consumables and mana/5 (or crit) does not care for the 5 second rule. Liberal use of consumables make you able to prevent getting out of mana in nearly every encounter. Group setup also has an influence though (at least for horde).

between mana pots and 5 piece strikers coupled with JOW/bow, i rarely run out of mana on most fights (although, to be fair, there are some fights where i actively preserve my mana beause i can't waste my potion cooldown, like huhuran pre-30%). if you don't want to spend money on consumables, you can get better results downranking, but your best output will be from using max ranks and potting when necessary.

Yeah, I'm guessing that if you downrank like 1-2 ranks, hit demonic runes, mana pots, have all the mp5 consumeables, you could avoid drinking an entire ebonroc fight

So how will Blizzard fix this without nerfing hunters by changing the aimed shot period or making all ranged weapons 3.4 speed?

I was thinking about this and came up with one possibility that might be more palpable to the hunter player base, weapon specializations. Warriors and rogues have specialization talents for melee weapons, why not give hunters specializations for ranged weapons? This might work given the ranged weapon types in the game can be broken down by speeds. Bows and guns are generally faster than crossbows, ranging from 1.5 (Precisely Calibrated Boomstick) and 1.6 (Hurricane) to 2.9 (Rhok) with most bows and guns around the 2.3-2.6 ranges. Most crossbows tend to be 3.0 speed and slower.

Sword spec has a chance for a double attack, mace spec has a chance to stun, and polearm/axe get extra crit. Maybe you could have something analogous to this for ranged weapon types. Perhaps once the expansion comes out they could add these to the marksmen tree. This is just a rough idea

Crossbow Specialization:
Rank 1: Increases your chance to get a critical strike with Crossbows by 1%
Rank 2: Increases your chance to get a critical strike with Crossbows by 2%
Rank 3: Increases your chance to get a critical strike with Crossbows by 3%

Gun Specialization:
Rank 1: Increases the damage you deal with guns by 1%
Rank 2: Increases the damage you deal with guns by 2%
Rank 3: Increases the damage you deal with guns by 3%

Bow Specialization:
Rank 1: Increases your attack speed with Bows by 2%
Rank 2: Increases your attack speed with Bows by 4%
Rank 3: Increases your attack speed with Bows by 6%

This is just a rough idea. You’d have to play with the numbers a bit to make sure that these would be at a relative power level as I have no idea if faster bows would equate to extra damage from guns or bigger crit chance from xbows.

They could always just normalize autoshot.

I suggested the specialization idea a bit back, and basically came up with similar ideas to yours(crit with crossbows, speed with bows, though I had guns as a chance to stun). They are basically gonna have to normalize auto-shot, or change the way aimed shot works(it could return to the old days where it replaced the auto-shot in rotation). Either way would be a significant nerf to hunters with slow weapons, which is unfortunate.

i seriously doubt this issue will be addressed before the expansion. changing the slavemaker to 3.4 is a patch that covers up the problem at least passibly until then. granted, it's really sad that weapons like Ancient Qiraji Musket, Huhuran's Stinger, Toxin Injector, and the amazing looking Naxx bow will fall by the wayside, but as long as there's a light at the end of the tunnel, it'll be enough to shut people up until some major mechanical changes can be made all at once.

That's kinda what I was thinking with my "bow specialization" idea. What if the attack speed increase included the cast time to aimed shot (but not the cooldown). In other words, a 6% increase in attack speed would reduce the aimed shot casting time from 3 seconds to about 2.48 sec, that would decrease the overall cycle time for bows so you could fit more cycles in compared to guns/xbows.

I guess I'm grasping at straws hoping the Blizzard doesn't decide to take the easy way out by simply nerf aimed shot but instead comes up with a more creative solution.

Heck just make aimed shot a prereq for bow specialization in the marksmenship tree and have it be

rank 1: reduces the cast time of your aimed shot by .3 seconds
rank 2: reduces the cast time of your aimed shot by .4 seconds
rank 3: reduces the cast time of your aimed shot by .5 seconds

the issue is not just the cast time, but the cooldown. weapons with speeds that fit closer to the exact cycle lose less of an autoshot both during the cast and between casts, and get a higher AP bonus on those shots that they do fire.

a possible solution could include un-normalizing aimed shot and making the skill cast time actually dependant on weapon speed (attack speed+some flat time), although i think then slow weapons would still be favored because the flat time would be a lower percentage of the actual attack speed, and it's not clear how much you would solve with the cooldown issue either. i don't feel like crunching numbers on this :-P

Could change it from 3s cast to weapon speed, meaning any speed bow would be able to not lose auto-shot time basically. Would of course have to remove the normalization of AP too for Aimed Shot.